Netbooks to gobble up 17% of portable computer market in 2010

I complain frequently that netbooks are really all the same. It really doesn’t matter what brand is stamped on the lid, most of the machines on the market today sport virtually identical hardware. They have similar screen sizes, similar performance, and so on.

It used to be that the only real difference between many netbooks was in the keyboard. Today most of the keyboards are the same even. Some netbook makers are starting to set themselves apart by adding in HD capable graphics via NVIDIA Ion like the Eee 1201N netbook. Despite the fact that most of the machines are virtually the same, netbooks are huge right now.



Mostly the massive popularity of the category can be blamed on the fact that they are cheap and the economy around the world is still slow. Analyst Will Strauss from Forward Concepts believes that in 2010 netbooks will remain popular. In fact, Strauss thinks the netbook will be very popular with about 17% of the portable PC market for 2010. That will amount to about 28 million units sold in 2010. Strauss predicts that the notebook will hold 79.4% of the market with about 131 million units sold in 2010.