Why is Dell shrinking its netbooks?
August 10, 2009 by Bernd Kling
The Inspiron Mini 12 is discontinued, one of few Atom-powered netbooks with a 12 inch display. The smaller Mini 9 – which was phased out some months ago – is coming back. The reasons behind Dells netbook downsizing are quite unclear.
Dell tells us the buyers did not really want a 12 inch netbook: “It really boils down to this: for a lot of customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooks … Larger notebooks require a little more horsepower to be really useful.”
Not everybody wants to believe this. We already knew about the bad feelings Intel and Microsoft have about cheap large-screen netbooks cannibalizing the more lucrative notebook markets. “Technologizer” Harry McCracken is “left flummoxed by that–there’s no reason why some folks might not be happy with a low-cost, basic-specs laptop that happened to have a larger screen than most netbooks. And there’s no technical reason not to build one, which is presumably why Dell built the Mini 12 in the first place.”
Maybe Intel put a little pressure on OEMs to build netbooks with no more than 10 inch screens? Michael Arrington thinks so:
“This includes direct pricing pressure – Intel prices Atom chips based on the size of the device screen. Anything over 10 inches is priced higher than devices with 10 inch or smaller screens. We think this is an inappropriate way to price Atom chips.”
(bk)
Screenshot: Dell
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