The netbook, she is dying

Dear people who yelled at me when I said netbooks were garbage: I was right. IDC is reporting that sales of netbooks running the Atom platform are flat. Why? Well, first off people have a little cash so they want to buy something nice for themselves instead of a $350 junkbook.

Competition from Netbooks that use processors from United Kingdom-based ARM–commonly referred to as “smartbooks”–and tablets, such as the iPad, will also be a factor in the Atom-based Netbook slowdown, Rau said.
In the first quarter of this year, Atom processors as a percentage of Intel mobile processors fell to 20.3 percent, compared with 24.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year and 23.5 percent in the third quarter, according to Rau, citing figures to be published later this week. “Pretty much all of last year, it was in the 23, 24, 25 percent range. So, 20 percent coming into Q1–that’s a noticeable change,” he said.

So yeah, you can argue that you’re doing all kinds of crazy work on your netbook, but that doesn’t mean your next laptop will be a netbook. It will be actually usable.