Acer Misses Sales Targets
In the US economic climate, it is hard to make any sane predictions one way or the other. We see continuous reports that netbooks are the saving grace of the PC market, the light at the end of the tunnel, the beacon of hope, Turns out, the light at the end of the tunnel may be the headlights of a train! I now see reports stating that netbooks have missed their first quarter sales estimates.
The report comes courtesy of DigiTimes, which is usually based on inside information about manufacturers in the far east (well, far east from this perspective, anyway). Acer had expected to ship 2 million Aspire One netbooks during Q1 of 2009, but sources say sales in the channels were lower. The same sources also claim that Asus only sold 900,000 Eee PCs during that same quarter, well short of the 1 million projected. MSI reportedly sold 200,000 Wind series netbooks. The story indicated that market saturation could be the reason for the lower-than-projected sales.
The figures are somewhat vague, and with little backup information at this point. One might remember, Intel did reveal they saw a reduction in the number of Atom chips sold in the first quarter, which may corroborate the DigiTimes story. Still, missing the market expectations is not that big of a deal, considering the insane growth the netbook market has seen so far - even during Q1 of 2009.
Another article on DigiTimes has to do with Intel's new and upcoming GN40 chipset
for netbooks, accompanied by the Atom N280 processors. This chipset
comes with increased 3D capabilities and hardware video decoding, but
Windows XP cannot take advantage of this because the
chipset relies on DirectX 10 and DirectX Video Acceleration 2.0. These are Vista-specific technologies. Since Windows XP does not make use of these
new capabilities, you will have to have Windows Vista for that. Netbook
makers confirmed the issue.
It seems as if Windows XP is finally starting to show its age.This is not a popular viewpoint. In my opinion, Vista is not ready to take over. Personally, I am waiting for Windows 7 (Or whatever name it sports when it hits the market.) XP's time has come and gone, and it's time the world moved on to more secure operating systems like Windows 7 and Linux.