Thursday, December 18, 2008

The Netbook Marketing Miracle


Once again proof that you should never be too sure about what the market does is shown in this article Based on his experience and market research the author very clearly proves that computers like the current generation of Netbooks never were and never will be successful. The funny thing about this is that is was written Michael Mace, a former employee of Palm Computing. And the company that is publishing it (Rubicon) actually advertises to be an expert in marketing. Now I'm not saying this company is not good at their work. It's more proof of the fact that nobody ever can predict what sells and what not. The most frightening thing for marketeers should be the fact that the product this article refers to (the Palm Foleo) was introduced in 2007 and was considered a flop end cancelled even before it was was ever sold. Yet it's difficult to see the difference between this box and the ASUS EeePC 700 which was introduced only a few months later. And a year after that Netbooks are responsible for almost 30% in all computer sales. So I wonder what Palm CEO Ed Colligan thinks when he reads back his this announcement.