There are some interesting data from Retrevo, a consumer electronic marketplace pondering over whether iPad sales is killing the Netbook market. I am not surprised by those figures. Generally speaking, there are three types of consumers when we are talking about mobile computing.

• Those who wants raw computing power
• Those who wants something affordable
• Those who wants both in between

Those who wants raw computing power

This category of consumers will opt for laptops like the Macbook Pro or high end Dell laptops. With longer battery life, computing power and storage almost similar to the desktop, they are gradually ditching their desktop to laptop. Below are the two charts for these types of consumers with an overall 65% opting for laptops instead of Netbooks because higher computing power is needed compared to price and mobility.

Those who wants something affordable

This category of consumers usually wanted something affordable that can perform their daily tasks such as checking emails, browsing and some light media entertainment. Before iPad came into picture, there were a huge market potential. They are small, and they are cheap. The market exploded significantly around 2008.

For years many ideas have sprung out to achieve a true mobile computing solution. Microsoft tried twice and failed. They first promoted the tablet form factor, which are very expensive and but less computing power. Tablets did not catch on for many years until they found some niche market in the medical industry.

Then came Microsoft’s UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) aka Project Origami and failed miserably because it focused on getting the computer smaller without considering the user interface. The UPMC is overpriced and is underpowered, not to mention having the same desktop version of Windows running in it makes the whole user experience a joke.

Then came the ingenuity of Asus Eee PC, which started the explosion of the Netbook market. They are designed to be small yet usable and they are priced to be affordable for many. Although a little underpowered, they came with a decent size of storage space, a screen size that makes sense and webcams. They are able to cater to majority of users who just want to be able to carry around with it anywhere and be able to perform tasks such as email and web browsing.

The iPad totally change the game with the announcement from Steve Jobs early 2010. They are affordable like netbooks and able to perform the tasks as netbooks do but more; a whole new user experience. Instead of cramping a full blown traditional operating system (that were designed for desktop type computing, usually for bigger screen size and the use of a mouse or trackpads) like Netbooks, iPad uses a more newer type of operating system like iPhone that gives users not only the ability to do simple tasks but a whole new rich multimedia content experiences, like books, magazines, comics, movies and games to name a few.

Judging from the charts above, majority are leaning towards an iPad and this clearly spell the end of the Netbook era. Although Netbooks prices are falling quickly because of the imminent iPad competition, there will come to a point that producing Netbooks will simply makes no business sense and I can predict by end of this year many will switch to produce a “Slate” form factor of mobile devicess that won’t be using Windows but rather newer OSes like Android or WebOS. Remember the infamous demo by Steve Balmer at CES 2010 using a SlatePC by HP running on Windows 7? Well HP figured that it simply won’t be efficient and had recently bought over Palm so that the HP Slate will runs on newer mobile OS, such as WebOS. The future of mobile OSes competition will most likely be between iPhoneOS and Andorid while many other players such as Palm’s HP’s WebOS and Nokia’s Maemo playing catch up from behind.

Those who wants both in between

This category is usually reserves for gadget lovers and geeks like me. When they want to perform hardcore task they will resort to their desktop or a more powerful laptop, but when they are on the road or having a coffee break at Starbuck they want something that is easy to carry around so they can continue with their email, “social conversation”, web browsing or blogging. These groups of people would want a form factor that make sense like iPad rather than having yet another smaller laptop at least in my humble opinion. Before the arrival of iPads many of these consumers would have carry around their iPhone, Android Phone or a Blackberry instead of a netbook. But with the excitement of iPad and similiar unannounced Slate form devices, I am sure they would love to have that as a portable device that they can carry around all the time wherever they go.

Conclusion

We will slowly see the Netbook form factor being replace by iPad or some Slate devices that are coming out to the market. For sure those devices won’t be using traditional operating systems like Windows or even Mac OS, but a new paradigm of OSes that are design to have mobility in mind that fit nicely into a 10″ screen size and using multi-touch as an input device. The future of mobile computing is bright and for the next few years will be dominated by Apple and Google. Microsoft will be having a hard time to catch up as long as they still are trying to fit in their antique Windows OS into all these new form factors.

Posted from Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia.