Sony VP thinks eee PC may kick off "race to the bottom"

[greggh]

Sony senior VP of IT product division, Mike Abary, thinks the eee PC is nothing but bad news.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9879798-1.html

Here at Sony's annual Open House event, the senior vice president of Sony's IT product division said the tiny $299 notebook could potentially shift the entire notebook industry.

"If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," said Mike Abary.

He means that if mainstream PC buyers start to find their needs met by a lightweight, simply featured, inexpensive portable, it's likely to impel all of the major players in the industry to pile on by lowering their prices. And that's in an industry with already low margins for retailers and manufacturers.

If the Eee PC just catches on with Linux developers, enthusiasts, and the tech-savvy early adopter crowd, that's fine by him. "But if mainstream buyers buy it, then, whoa," Abary said.

People who buy their Vaio at the SonyStyle store online have as many as 36 different choices for personalizing their laptop. The Graphic Splash line has three different patterns and multiple color combinations, as well as a choice of font on the keyboard. "That's what consumers really, really want," Abary told a gathering of reporters earlier in the day.

It's a good thing Sony knows what's really important in a notebook. Who needs good functionality at a super cheap price when you can have your choice of font on the keyboard at only 3 times the price?

[Tsuroerusu]

Sigh! Why am I not surprised that it's Sony saying something like this?

[greggh]

Sigh! Why am I not surprised that it's Sony saying something like this?

Could just as easily been someone from Apple saying the same thing.

[Tsuroerusu]

Sigh! Why am I not surprised that it's Sony saying something like this?

Could just as easily been someone from Apple saying the same thing.

Maybe, but Apple do sell smaller devices, such as their iPhone and stuff like that, that you can do various things on. I would actually not expect Apple to say something in this area, especially since they have recently moved into the market for ultra-ultra lightweight notebook computers, and with Intel's Montevina Centrino 2 platform being launched in June/July, they could go even lower if they wanted to.

[davijordan]

I will be interesting to see when the firmware drives start to have issues to see what the big laptop companies say.