The rampant blog traffic March 4 regarding Coby’s offer to take smartbook prices below $100 could have been anticipated. Semiconductor suppliers can talk about “bills of materials” until they’re blue in the face, but when someone offers a smartbook at a retail price of $85, the message gets through to the end consumer.
Most reader comments at Engadget (from whence this picture comes) and ZDnet center on whether ruggedness and reliability matter at a price that is at par with a nice dinner for two. Certainly, we can’t fault the NBPC722 with making compromises that are anything less than typical smartbook specs. The platform has a 7-inch screen, which ZDnet’s Sean Portnoy suggests is sub-standard, but is about what is expected in this category. And the use of the Marvell PXA303 as a processor shows that the future Armada line could be a force to contend with — though it underscores the semantic question we have asked in the past, if a platform uses something other than an ARM, is it still a smartbook? The NBPC722 is based on the former Intel XScale architecture.
What will be important to watch is whether users consider 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 2 GB of flash, and Windows CE to be a paltry feature set. My own bet is that at these price points, they won’t last long (both on the shelves of dealers, and in the hands of users). End users will be forgiving of less than an optimal connectivity experience, if they can buy or receive the Coby as a gift, or as an afterthought purchase for the kids. Maybe Coby could find a market as a virtually disposable smartbook for travel. It’s relevant to note that Coby’s US business has been centered on portable MP3 players and audio products, showing that the Nvidia notion of the audio player evolving into a lower-end smartbook has some justification.
This has to put some fear and trepidation in the hearts of OEMs and semiconductor suppliers alike, who will scrutinize Coby’s manufacturing costs. Can other smartbook vendors meet these kind of constraints without sacrificing some dependability in display and motherboard reliability – and does that matter to the user? Will the $85 blue-light pricing spark a price war that affects both smartbooks and netbooks? Will the competition become so fierce that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission eventually takes complaints about below-cost dumping? Stay tuned.
Loring
