Firstly James Kendrick of jkOnTheRun sells his UMPC and now Matt Miller is selling his too.
What’s up?
At the World of Mobility expo I spoke to a number of resellers about the UMPC and they are all having a hard time selling it. On one hand, its not big enough for many commercial users and ink lovers and on the other hand, it hasn’t got a keyboard for the rest of us consumers. The unique usage scenarios and advantages of the UMPC just take too much money to promote to consumers. It cuts out the profit margin. Its not worth it.
Many of the journalists that reviewed the UMPCs in the March/April time period were right (and I agreed with them then too.) Its not that a UMPC needs a keyboard to be used, it just needs a keyboard to be sold.
You may not see many more 7″ consumer UMPC devices like the Q1 and R2H in my opinion because 1) Its too expensive to promote at low (mass market) profit margins and 2) Browser based applications will get more popular thanks to Google. This will enable simpler 5″ browser-based Internet devices to perform most of the functions that consumers want.
Steve.
November 29th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
While I do have mine up for sale on a couple discussion forums and am asking about it on my personal blog, I have only had one offer so far and even then it is extremely difficult for me to give up my Q1. The tides are turning and I may soon pull off my ads since it really is a great device and has traveled many thousands of miles with me
November 29th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Hi Matt.
I hope you don’t give it up. The feedback we’ve had from the owners has been great so far. We need more of it, not less!
Regards
Steve.
November 30th, 2006 at 2:46 am
by q1b is saving my butt right now! I actually had my laptop start bombing on me. The laptop is in need of a reinstall but i’m trying to last till the end of the semester.
I’m keeping my Q1b!