Sony's entry into the crowded netbook market finds itself competing with well-established brands such as Acer, Asus and Lenovo. Can a high-resolution display and the Sony brand name make its Vaio W-Series of "mini-notebooks" an able competitor?
Electronics giant Sony belatedly enters the crowded netbook
market with the announcement of its Viao W-series mini notebook, which goes
on sale in Japan and parts of Europe in mid-August. The 10.1-inch-screen device
is also available for pre-order via the companys Sony Style Website. The
netbook is offered for 60,000 yen (approximately $629).
The Vaio W-series comes in a choice of three colors (sugar
white, berry pink and cocoa brown) and with a high resolution (1366 x 768),
16:9 widescreen display. The W-Series is powered by a 1.66Ghz Intel Atom
processor and runs Windows XP Home edition. Other features include 1GB of
memory and a 160GB ATA Serial hard disk drive. The netbook also includes two USB
ports, VGA out, an Ethernet port and multimedia slots for SD memory and Memory
Stick Duo.
Resource Library:
Sony is also touting the netbooks green features,
including Energy Star certification, a mercury-free backlit LCD display, and
halogen free flame retardants on all coverings, housings and plastic parts, as
well as the motherboard. Recycled paper or certified paper is used for product
packaging and extended user documentation is provided electronically on the
hard disk drive to reduce paper use.
The company enters an increasingly competitive netbook
market fueled by new models from companies such as Acer, Asus, HP and Lenovo,
whose products retail for less than $500. While Sony does offer features such as
an embedded Web camera and a higher-resolution display (most netbooks have 1,024-by-600-pixel
displays, versus the Vaio Ws 1366 x 768 pixel display), well-established
brands, particularly Acer (with its Aspire line) and Asus (the hit Eee PC
family), may prove tough competition for Sonys offering.
Netbooks are also gaining market share in the business
world, where cost-conscious companies and small businesses are turning to less
expensive, more portable mini notebooks to stretch IT budgets without
sacrificing power or productivity. Research firm IDC, which tracks global PC
market trends, released a report in June which predicted netbook shipments
would slow later this year, though netbooks sold a combined 5.7 million units
in the first quarter of 2009. The shipment of the netbook/mini-notebook PCs was
valued at $2.2 billion, and IDC predicted mini-notebooks would grow to 9.5
percent of the total PC shipment market this year.
Research firm Gartner was also cautiously optimistic about
the future expansion of the netbook market in a June 2009 report: While the company noted the netbook
segment posted its first quarter-over-quarter decline in first-quarter 2009, it
also reported the netbook market is cushioning a harder-hit PC market, and units
remain on track to reach 21 million this year and 30 million next year.
/ 5 
