Richard Brown, Marketing manager for VIA, is reporting a few snippets from the Pheonix (the BIOS people) Strategy 2009 conference in California and an interesting statistic has been put forward.

70% of Netbook sales so far have been in Europe.

Apparently it’s to do with the advanced 3G market and I guess the fact that theres over 700 million people living in Europe helps too. I also guess that the number is based on OEM orders because although there are quite a few free netbooks available on the high streets now, the main carriers still havent got up to speed with devices in shops. Maybe they’ve still got a huge stock of cheap USB sticks to get rid of as that has been their carrot over the last six months.

The sme could happen with MIDs too. There are already three carriers in Europe offering Intel-based MIDs and I expect products to roll out quickly across the other carriers. Unles the U.S. gets its expensive, fragmented data offerings sorted out, its not going to see many MIDs at all and the picture will remain apple and blackberry-tinted.

Check out Richards notes here and take note of his arm-based netbook comment. Its something I believe too.