Apple gave up a fresh $999 low-priced white polycarbonate MacBook last Tuesday, and our origins now tell us that this low-priced choice is as low as the company is willing to go. While a variety of low-priced netbook-like options were tested, the company just was not satisfied with the performance; and as a result they’ve elected not to play in that market section.

The netbook segment has been hot latterly with numerous major players now offering a variety of “me, too” netbook choices to maintain with the demands of consumers. We tend to think that the link between actual low-end laptop computers and netbooks continues to blur, with netbooks first starting as small 10-inch units, but now a good number of them have reached almost 12 inches. Additionally, the hardware performance has been cranked too.

The latest $999 low-priced white polycarbonate MacBook is a 13.3-inch design that weighs 4.7 pounds. The screen only has a resolution of 1280 x 800 using an LED backlit high gloss widescreen display. It uses the 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of memory with a 250GB 5400 RPM hard drive. It also includes both an optical drive and wireless as part of the package, as you’d expect. This is not really that bad of a deal for $999 and it does compare at about the same or a little more than similarly priced Windows laptop computers at the same price point.

The conclusion for Apple to not release a netbook may actually be more important due to the fact that the company has a tablet product that is on the drawing board. While it is widely known that in many ways this product is an overgrown iPod Touch with a 10-inch multi-touch display, it’s likely that Apple sees no real need to launch a netbook product when they will have this product that will fill the space at a price point that’s likely less than this $999 MacBook.

The Apple tablet could be used for the same things that the average netbook is used for. The majority of netbooks are not being used as full fledged laptop computers, but instead are generally used to browse the Internet and check Email. Apple’s tablet product will, of course, do this with no problem at all, so why do a netbook at all when the profit margins are so narrow and you’ve to really sell a lot of them to make any profit at all?

Apple may have had this plan right along, however it could be that they have just seen the light and recognize that they just do not need to be in the netbook market place. After all, if you had something like the new Apple tablet approaching and you know it’s going to price less than you lowest end laptop computer and yet do the same thing as a netbook, then why waste the effort and investment? Only time will tell if we’re right, however it surely does seem that Apple does have it all figured out this time around.

2 Comments

1. Jack says:

   March 20, 2010 at 2:21 pm

   I really liked your blog! It helped me alot…

   Reply