Netbooks to Sell 35 Million Units in 2009?

Towards the end of last month, we reported on an industry story that stated that notebooks, for the first time ever, outsold desktop PCs. This occurrence took place during Q3, so chances are good the variances between the two are even more defined for Q4. What’s to thank for such stark increases? Netbooks, and lots of them.

While at Intel’s Developer Forum in 2007, CEO Paul Otellini made a huge claim that notebooks would outsell desktops by, I believe, 2010. He might have been a bit off, but it’s hard to blame him… ASUS’ first netbook was introduced just a month or two after the event. I think we pretty-much all know what happened since then.

But just how much growth can we expect to see this year, and in the future? Analysts at ABI Research have some bold claims for 2009, and I’m having a difficult time disagreeing. They believe that near 35 million netbooks will be sold this year, which, going by last year’s figures, could be close to 25% of all notebook sales. They go on to state that in 2013, that number will balloon up to 139 million, which would no doubt render most full-sized notebooks as a niche product. I certainly don’t want to see the standard notebook get overshadowed by netbooks, but the popularity of the light PCs sure can’t be denied. This might be a very interesting year where they are concerned.

While the advent of low-cost, power stingy x86 and ARM processors were the technical keys to netbooks, Burden argues that industry and consumer expectations also needed to evolve before netbooks would meet market acceptance. “In recent years, the industry still expected the smartphones to be more than they turned out to be, and most recently, MIDs were thought to be the next big mobile devices segment, but an unclear usage model continues to confuse the market. So today, netbooks’ time has come, and ABI research expects them to enjoy very strong market growth.”