NetbookTech

ABI Research is out with some interesting predictions for the new smartbook category. According to Jeff Orr, senior analyst with the group, an estimated 163 million smartbook units will ship worldwide in 2015 – a significant uptick for a category that just recently launched.

So what’s ABI Research’s notion of a smartbook? Here are their exact words:

“As ABI Research defines it, a smartbook is a low-powered device running a mobile operating system that is always connected, either via Wi-Fi or (more often) using cellular or mobile broadband. Smartbooks can take many different shapes. They are a subset of MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and netbooks, and address the same potential users, usage, pricing, and market needs. The difference is that they don’t use x86 processors.”

Products fitting the bill include processors from Qualcomm, Freescale, TI, and NVIDIA. Oh yes, ABI Research also includes the recently announced Apple iPad as a smartbook thanks to the custom-built Apple processor presumably based around an ARM core processor.

And the keys to the ultimate success of smartbooks? Price naturally. The research firm believes entry-level smartbooks need to be priced $200 dollars or less.

So what do you say folks? Would you consider getting a smartbook if it was less than $200 dollars? In addition, would you be ok with a system that didn’t run Windows but some Linux-based derivative? Curious to hear what all of you think here.

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Lenovo announced the world’s first Qualcomm Snapdragon-based smartbook today in the form of the Lenovo Skylight. Featuring a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, the Skylight is super light, super thin, supports 3G connectivity, and offers 10+ hours of battery life with practically instant resume-on capabilities.

Here are pictures of the Skylight from the outside. As you can see, it’s super thin and weighs less than 2 pounds.

Open up the Skylight and you’ll find a beautiful 10 inch display as well as a full-sized keyboard.

The internals of the Skylight include the 1GHz Snapdragon chipset, 20GB of standard flash, Wi-Fi connectivity, and support for 3G connectivity (via AT&T DataConnect mobile broadband).

There’s no solid state drive on the inside but that’s ok because you can add additional capacity through USB-based Lenovo flash drives (shown above as the thing that’s sticking out of the Skylight) as well as external flash media through a slot.

The Skylight runs a Linux-based OS complete with a custom user interface featuring “live web gadgets.” Users will be able to check Google Gmail, update Facebook status, view YouTube videos, and browse the Internet. The system comes with more than 18 pre-loaded web gadgets with more expected. Oh and yes – it supports 720p video playback (they showed the unit playing back a Star Trek MPEG-4 trailer).

The Lenovo Skylight will be coming out in April for an unsubsidized price of $499 at www.lenovo.com. AT&T will also sell the Skylight with a new two-year AT&T DataConnect mobile broadband plan as well as Data Connect Pass pay-as-you-go plans.

Stay tuned for more info on the Skylight as CES 2010 progresses.

Lenovo confirmed on Thursday that the company will be announced their first “smartbook” product at CES 2010 in January. According to PC Magazine, the device will be sold by AT&T, presumably as part of a mobile broadband subsidized package. No further details on the system were provided by either Lenovo or AT&T.

“Smartbook” systems utilize Qualcomm’s ARM-based Snapdragon processor and come with a non-Windows OS – typically Linux. A spokewoman for Lenovo was quoted as saying in an email:

"Lenovo is developing a smartbook based on Snapdragon, which we expect to announce at CES… Unfortunately, there are no further details at this point.”

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Above is a snapshot of an NVIDIA Tegra-powered 8.9 inch smartbook designed by Mobinnova and manufactured by Foxconn Electronics.

DigiTimes claims the smartbook has already received orders from telecom providers in Europe and in North America and is expected to arrive before the end of the year.

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One of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Smartbook devices made an appearance last week at Chicago’s “4G World”. Dubbed the “Mangrove” and manufactured by Korean manufacturer, C-motech, the Smartbook apparently runs Windows Mobile 6.5 (there’s apparently support for Android also). No further details as of yet.

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Tim Bajarin of PC Magazine has published an excellent article covering the smartbook device concept being pushed by Qualcomm and its telecomm partners.

While netbooks are best seen as small, inexpensive, secondary notebooks, smartbooks are being marketed as instant-on, always-connected devices – providing users with quick and easy access to applications and content on the net.

More importantly, smartbooks will include from the get-go embedded 3G modems – making these devices ideal targets of mobile carriers. As the smartphone market begins to saturate, mobile carriers are looking for new devices to bundle mobile broadband service. We’ve seen this with netbook models and you can be sure the carriers are salivating at the thought of smartbooks.

The real question is – will a consumer opt for a smartbook device running a non-x86 processor and a non-Windows OS? Only time will tell ..

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