Will 10 million mini laptops be sold in ’08, and will Asus grab more than half the market? Such are the dreams of the company, which moved 350,000 last year.
Am I a bit skeptical—about both the 10M prediction and the market-share prediction, given the recession and entries of HP, MSI and Dell? Yep.
But even if Asus ends up far short of its goals, it’s an example of the huge potential of small, e-book-capable laptops, which are less awkward to read off than the larger models, even without the tablet option.
This is yet another reminder of the need for publishers to think beyond the Kindle and to forget about DRM.
Remember, many and maybe even most of the Asus machines will be probably be linux models with FBReader, which cannot read "protected" books. Oh, but it can read ePub.
Related: Nelson: 9 million have used mobile phones to pay for goods and services in U.S., from InfoMobile. As screen tech improves, e-books could increasingly be among the purchases—and remember, the 9M fig is just for the States.
