What to do when a trailblazing tech company launches a market-defining product once again, and that product happens to be killing your niche market?
And to make matters worse, this company, more famous for making premium-priced gadgets and devices, all of a sudden decides to price its latest bestselling product much lower than those of its Johnny-come-lately rivals’ copycat devices?
Netbook vendors face such a scenario right now.
The iPad (and now, the iPad 2) has enabled Apple and Steve Jobs to accomplish at least a couple of things. First, they were able to create (or at least, redefine) a new market. And, second, come up with a device that might finally kill off a computing platform for which Jobs and company have expressed much disdain.
But if some people think that netbooks will simply roll over and die, they have to do some rethinking.
$200 Netbook
Taiwan-based PC vendor Asus plans to launch a low-cost Google Chrome netbook.
As a concept, netbooks are supposed to be “light” in the first place. This makes some people wonder what a light netbook would be.
In this case, Asus has partnered with Intel to come up with a lightweight laptop that reportedly will come with a $200-250 price tag. To achieve this price range, the netbook will come with either Chrome OS or Android 3.0 operating system.
A Windows license, which would cause its price to shoot up, it cannot have.
Why do I have this feeling I will not be surprised to one day see a copy of this netbook loaded with Windows XP or Windows 7 operating system, albeit with a shady license status?
Unpaid Bloggers
The Newspaper Guild, a union of media workers in the United States, has called on bloggers to stop writing for free for the Huffington Post, an online network of news and opinion pages. The Guild also called on Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, who earlier sold the Web site to AOL for $315 million, to pay bloggers.
The Huffington Post rejected the Guild’s allegations, claiming that bloggers are happy to participate in the Web site’s platform for non-compensated amateur writers.
Well, if people do not see value in their work and are willing to give away their written pieces for free, there is nothing anybody else can do about it.
Apparently, Huffington Post has found a very profitable business model. That is precisely why Internet company AOL bought the Web site in the first place. Will those non-professional bloggers remain willing to write for free? Let’s wait and see.
That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.
source: mb.com.ph
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