ACM TechNews

Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry

New York Times (07/21/08) Richtel, Matt

Silicon Valley start-up CherryPal has introduced a low-powered personal computer for surfing the Internet and checking email. Cherry Pal's $300 desktop PC is about the size of a paperback and uses 2 watts of power. CherryPal is the latest computer company to use cloud computing, or data managed and stored on distant servers and not on the actual machines, to offer small, low-cost machines. Companies such as Asus and Everex in Taiwan have pioneered the concept, but the broad appeal for the new computers, often called netbooks, has forced the bigger computer companies to take notice. Dell, Acer, and Hewlett-Packard are among the big industry players who plan to enter the space for the device that has little onboard memory, Intel is providing a low-powered chip, and Microsoft has made its Windows XP operating system software available for the unit. Asus has sold out the 350,000 global inventory for its Linux-based Eee PC, which was introduced in 2007, and its supply has been short ever since. "HP, Dell and these other PC makers have learned that if there's consumer interest, you can't just sit back and let someone else steal all the thunder," says Tim Bajarin, an industry analyst with Creative Strategies, a technology consulting firm. The market could grow from fewer than 500,000 in 2007 to 9 million in 2012, according to IDC. However, some PC makers such as Fujitsu continue to hold out because profit margins are already thin for the industry and netbooks offer little margin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/technology/
21pc.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

---

© Copyright 2008 Information, Inc. This service may be reproduced for internal distribution.