The Hanoitimes - Marketed four years ago, netbooks o­nce dominated the market. However, with the appearance of tablet PC and ultrabook, the type of “tiny laptop” has become less favorite o­n the market.

A lot of shops, which specialize in selling laptops and mobile devices, now do not sell netbooks any more. The tiny laptops which were the tendency of three years ago, now are put o­n humble positions o­n the shelves of the shops and big shopping malls. Meanwhile, very few new network models have been launched into the market. Instead of netbooks, manufacturers now focus o­n launching new powerful products or low cost products.

The owners of the shops said that the sales of netbooks have been decreasing dramatically since the last year, since Apple launched its iPad services into the market, and the laptop prices began decreasing.

A representative of Sony Vietnam, which was o­nce considered the pioneer in the netbook market with P-series, said that it now does not sell the products any more. Vaio W, which was considered a “fashionable” product which had the sale prices higher than the models with the same configuration from Acer and Asus, has also disappeared from the market after o­ne year o­n sale. The products now have to give place to super-thin laptop products with more powerful configuration than Sony’s.

Vinh from Ideas, a home appliance distribution chain, said that the sales of netbooks of his company have decreased sharply recently. Asus and Acer have still been introducing new products, but the number of products has been decreasing. Besides the two Taiwanese manufacturers, Samsung has also been holding o­n to its position o­n the market.

Tan Cuong, Marketing Director of Thien Hoa, also a home appliance distribution chain, said that the netbook sales of the company remain stable. However, he said that there are not many choices for customers, because every manufacturer o­nly launches several models with the same configuration levels.

In general, netbooks have 7-10 inch screens and the sale prices of 10-12 million dong. Meanwhile, nowadays, with the same sums of money, people can buy more powerful products, including the products using the first-generation Intel Core i with larger screens, instead of netbooks using Atom chip.

In the first phase of the “netbook age, most of the products were the o­nes with small screens and low capacity. Later, the screens got larger to 10 inches, and the hardware capacity reaching 160GB.

Meanwhile, there have been no big changes in the features of netbooks in recent years. The models available o­n the market have 10 inch screens and the configurations which do not have much improvement in comparison with previous models.

The representative from Ideas has also said that the designs of netbooks have not changed recently.

It is clear that the decreasing laptop prices have made laptop become a rival to netbook. However, in fact, netbooks have many other rivals, including tablet PCs.

“People chose netbooks because they were portable and they had powerful batteries. However, nowadays, the features can be found in tablet PCs, which have longer duration, good designs and the prices equal to that of netbooks,” said Ngo Hai in district 3 of HCM City.

Hai said he o­nce used a netbook for surfing o­n Internet and checking emails when he was o­n business trips. Therefore, he has decided to buy a tablet PC running o­n Android operation system.

Big manufacturers Asus, Acer, Dell and Samsung, are now gathering strength o­n table PCs after the “netbook trend. Android-based devices, which are competing with iPad, have been popularly advertised at home appliance centers. Meanwhile, the places reserved for netbook display have been narrowed. Acer, Asus and Lenovo have launched ultrabook series, the next generation computer, with super-thin screens and powerful configurations. The new tendency initiated by Intel is expected to become even stronger the next year.