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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.
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Kids expected to go nuts over smartbooks
Simple, cheap and fun
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.