Freescale believes smartbooks will be very popular among school-age
kids, and the younger demographics is expected to drive demand for the
new toys.
"Smartbooks
are well suited for a younger, school-age demographic because they have
all grown up surrounded by technology and they need something that can
keep up with their hectic lives at a low price point," claims Franck
Nicholls of Freescale.
Although kids might not have a lot of money in their pockets, there's
always the nag factor, as they tend to drive parents nuts unless they
get what they want. The biggest upshot of smartbooks is that they
should end up on the cheap side, even cheaper than some high end music
players, not to mention mobile phones.
Analysts are also confident smartbooks could drive a mobile broadband
boom. Strategy Analytics believes the number of mobile broadband
subscriptions will quadruple by 2014 to 1.3 billion. Telcos are already
offering affordable netbooks with their data plans and smartbooks could
drive prices even lower. With prices expected to start well under $200,
the cost of getting a smartbook with a one-year or two-year data plan
should be negligible.
The only real drawback of the smartbook concept is the lack of a proper
Windows OS, as most smartbooks are based on ARM processors, which get
along with x86 instructions like Arabs and Israelis. However, the young demographic
should have no trouble getting to grips with any OS you can throw at
them. Kids are smart nowadays, or so they say.
More
here.