If you are in the netbook or MID business and haven’t looked through the Intel IDF content catalogue yet, do so now. Download relevant PDFs before they are gone because they contain some real information gems.

For example, IDG are predicting that the netbook market will reach over 30m units in 2011 rising to 45m in 2012 and that the netbook market will represent just 15% of the overall market for laptops (staying steady at 15% from 2009 until 2012 at least.

Or how about that the average netbook price in the US is way lower, at just over $300, than anywhere else in the world where prices are nearer to $400.

On Linux, Intel says that it will DROP in market share between 2008 and 2012 with Windows 7 taking the lions share. That doesn’t stoke much confidence in Moblin does it!

Western Europe is currently the biggest netbook market at over 2x shipments compared to the US.

Source: SF09_MPTS007 (via the Content catalog.)

There are some interesting stats about users and buyers too. 85% of netbooks are bought for one’s own use and that person is in their mid-30s. Internet surfing is the most common use with video streaming coming in at a tiny percent of usage (2%)

Source: SF09_MPTS008 (via the Content catalog.)

There’s a nice set of study data too. Did you know that most smartphone, MID, laptop and netbook usage sessions are under 5 minutes long and that 70% of active time was to social-related applications?

78% of usage is through the browser.

Source: SF09_RESS008 (via the Content catalog.)

Other interesting presentations to check out:

Intel’s Next Generation System-On-a-Chip (CETS003) – Find out about the CE4100 Atom processor targeted at IPTV applications. Interesting items: CivX certifications, jpeg decode acceleration, 1080p acceleration and more.

Mobile PC Power Sources: Li-Ion Battery Technology (EBLS003) In interesting presentation that will bring you up to date about what’s happening in the real world of Li-Ion technology. (My notes here)

Check out the set of MID-related presentations too. SF09_MIDS005 talks about the telephony stack and the SNRLabs connection management software that will be in Moblin 2.1 for handhelds.

On the Moblin side of things, at least take the time to check out MOBS001 which has an excellent diagram showing the breakdown of developers across mobile platforms and how Moblin will span MIDs, netbooks, nettops, auto and embedded markets. Did you know that gesture support is planned for 2.1, that sync and sensor support is planned for V2.2 and that later versions in the 2011 and 2012 timeframe should support intelligent multi-screen, multi-touch and context-aware software? Check out the Moblin roadmap.

There are other presentations about cloud computing, turbo-boost technology, Moorestown (my analysis here) and I’ve listed some more recommended sessions here.

If the links above don’t work, you can find the downloads on the IDF 2009 Content Catalog

PC World report that netbooks make up most of the Cyber Monday top-10 sales list on Amazon.com. It it’s not just on Amazon.com that it’s happening. Germany and the UK are two other netbook-crazy countries where netbook interest is leading, not just the computer segments, but the whole consumer electronics segment. The Samsung NC10, for example, is the number three most-viewed device in the popular German price comparison engine, Geizhals. That’s number three out of over 300,000 consumer products including DVD’s, phones and LCD TV’s. At number 10 is the Eee PC. The Wii appears at number 11 and the first notebook appears at number 35.

Anyone care to take a guess at how it might look in 12 months?

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.

If netbooks are following the traditional product cycle, they must be nearing the peak in Europe this week as two major budget supermarket chains push out the devices to their mainstream customer base. Aldi, the supermarket chain that sold 10′s of thousands of Medion Akoya Minis in the summer, is about to push the device out through its 300 UK shops. Expect at least 6 pieces per store for something like 2000 sales on the 7th of September. Then, in Germany, watch out for Plus who, with their 2700 shops started offering the Zen-ID (like the Akoya Mini, the same as the MSI Wind.) At an average of 6 per shop, that’s another 16000+. Add on the discount electrical stores and office stores and you’re at well over 20000, in just a few weeks, in Germany. Lets have some fun with these figures now and play Gartner because I think we’ve got enough data points to start estimating global netbook sales. [Article continues below...]

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