Participants in the panel included HP Senior Manager of Product Marketing for Business Notebooks Sarah Bussell; Intel General Manager Nettop and Netbook Computing Noury Al-Khaledy; Samsung Director of Product Marketing and Development Mobile Computing Todd Bouman; Verizon director of data marketing Bruce Simon, and Creative Strategies President Tim Bajarin. Laptop Magazine editor Mark Spoonauer was the moderator.
The panel asked the question: "Netbooks, Fad or Change Agent," and perhaps unsurprisingly, the panelists opted for the latter. Several panelists pointed out that the idea that customers are only buying cheaper netbooks due to the weak economy is something of a myth, mostly because the companies behind the devices have mostly positioned them as "companion" devices.
Bajarin said he saw three reasons to be optimistic about the growth of netbooks in the coming year: the newly minted telecom tie, which has been embraced by both Verizon and AT&T; the upcoming arrival of the Windows 7 operating system, and the popularity of the devices in emerging markets. He saw strength in the netbook sector both during back-to-school time and this year's holiday season.
Samsung's Bouman spoke of doing research on college campuses, during which he spoke with 25 students, 23 of whom reported they do not bring their computers to class with them. When told about netbooks, the students "went bananas," he said, and 12 of them bought them within 12 weeks.
The panelists also expressed excitement about CULV (Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage), a platform developed by Intel that more than one panelist predicted "will soon take off," as will ultra-thin netbooks.
Perhaps above all, the panelists stated that netbooks are not meant to replace notebooks, and they expect netbooks to remain popular as companion pieces to notebooks. Al-Khaledy, for instance, pointed out that 90-92 percent of netbook users already have at least one PC.
He added that Intel sees a concept called "6-60-6"- users who have all three devices will generally spent about six minutes on a smartphone, sixty minutes on a netbook, and six hours on a regular notebook. Verizon's Simon pointed out that his company has a similar philosophy, only having the numbers to 3, 30, and 3.
