Looking back at the holiday sales of 2008, things were quite flat. In fact, overall there was only a 1% increase. However, this was largely due to netbooks which ate up a 20% share of the laptop market. The manufacturers are less than thrilled that this is the way things are going. This is because netbooks have razor thin profit margins.
While Intel makes the Atom processor that powers most of these netbooks, they don’t make much on each unit they ship. It is one of the lower end pieces of silicon, and they would be happier selling $300 chips, and not sub-$100 chips for $350 netbooks. Still, in this economy, they should be happy that consumers are buying their products.
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