Today’s a time when the hype around tablets is at an all time high internationally and in India it’s still on its way up. India specific – the OlivePad has been launched, Kapil Sibal has shown India’s $35 tablet, Adam from Notion Inc and iPad has also made inroads unofficially. Expected by the end of financial year 2010-2011 would be the launches of the Dell streak, Acer’s tablet and plenty others. Various companies are increasingly slicing a share of this tablet hype that’s created and naturally the media is also picking it all up. This is all contributing to even more hype around tablets.
But once this bubble is burst, people will actually begin to realize that tablets are merely lifestyle products. It may grab eyeballs but it’s quite an expensive way to grab attention as all they do is just that! People will come to realize (& I predict that time to be around Q3 FY 2011) that these 5inch-10inch tablets may provide connectivity on the go but if you dig deeper we require connectivity for 2 reasons – One, for work to check mails, using spreadsheets, word docs etc or Two, for networking and surfing the net. Now for checking your mails your phone is a much better option because it is more convenient to carry. For working on spreadsheets – tablets are the last things on our head. For networking and general surfing are you really going to spend around 25k!
But come to think of it, netbooks do provide the sturdiness you require to work on the go. Once the cloud becomes more popular netbooks will again come into the picture because storage won’t be an obstacle. Companies like Google are relying heavily on netbooks for their Chrome OS. Put all this together, the conclusion that I’ve drawn is – Netbooks will climb the slope of illusionment and probably this’ll be in tandem when tablets fall towards the slope of disillusionment!
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