iPad or hybrid "Best Buy choice revisted"

Now that it's clear Apple's iPad is encroaching to some degree on Netbook sales, it raises the question as to which product is going to put a brake on iPad sales.

First, let's state up front that Netbooks are here to stay. A tidy 70 million Netbooks have shipped to date and they're only getting better: vastly improved battery life and now--finally--dual-core Atom processors, give the Netbook a needed boost in performance.

Will Netbook/tablet hybrids emerge as serious iPad rivals?

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

That said, these tiny laptops received their first dose of real competition from the smaller, lighter iPad earlier this year, one of the reasons the category's growth is trending downward, as Gartner explained in a paragraph devoted to the iPad's cannibalization of Netbooks in a press release back in July.

But the iPad is also overdue for a response from rivals. Like the Netbook, it has had a computing category--in this case, consumer tablets--pretty much unto itself so far. That will change later this year and in 2011 when a wave of new tablets breaks.

One of the more interesting challenges to the iPad is the hybrid tablet/Netbook. A Dell executive flourished the 10-inch Dell Inspiron Duo on Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Looking very much like a tablet in its slate configuration and no different than most Netbooks in its keyboard-equipped clamshell mode, the Inspiron Duo promises Windows 7-based productivity--a claim the iPad certainly can't make. Dave Zavelson, a marketing executive at Dell, said it would ship later this year and promised mobile broadband too, mentioning WiMax in particular.

Other obvious upsides include Flash compatibility (which I still miss on my iPad), a dual-core Atom processor--as I said above, the new, highly integrated Atom design has much better battery life--and last but not least a decent apps store: the millions of Windows applications out there.

And then there's products such as the dual-screen Toshiba Libretto W100, another interesting--though pricey--dual-core processor-based Windows 7 hybrid.

So, will a hybrid category of tablet/Netbook emerge to reinvent the Netbook category and--along with a new crop of dual-core models--stall the iPad's heady growth? Maybe a more practical question is, will hybrids give prospective iPad buyers pause when shopping in places like Best Buy?

Finally, a brief history--and forecast--of three-pound-and-under compute devices at Best Buy, Verizon, AT&T:

• 2008: First Asus Eee PC Netbooks appear at Best Buy
  
• 2009: 3G-enabled Netbooks are introduced in force at Verizon (e.g., HP Mini) and AT&T stores
  
• 2009: Netbook choices, shelf space expand at Best Buy: HP, Toshiba, Samsung, Dell, Acer, Asus
  
• 2010: iPad comes to Best Buy, offering first viable alternative to Netbooks
  
• 2011: Netbook/tablet hybrids come to Best Buy, such as "WiMax" capable Dell Inspiron Duo
  
• 2011: Tablets at all three stores: Samsung Galaxy Tab plus Motorola, HP, BlackBerry

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Most iPhone applications gathering dust

iPhone users have very short attention spans.

Just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased, according to Pinch Media, which analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple's App Store. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it. The drop-off is worse for free applications.

Those are amazing numbers. It's not a new pattern--GigaOm and TechCrunch noticed this last August--but back then, with the App Store just a month old, it was hard to know whether that usage model would last.

Now it's clear that seven months, 15,000 applications, and 500 million downloads later, things haven't changed. App Store activity continues to be huge; Apple has made the App Store the centerpiece of its iPhone marketing over the last few months, highlighting the breadth and depth of applications that are available on the App Store for business and entertainment.

But if most people don't find iPhone applications very compelling, does it matter how many exist? It's enough to wonder if the App Store is starting to get a bit saturated.

Pinch Media CEO Greg Yardley looks at it a little differently. In his view, Apple has built such an easy-to-use distribution (as well as payment processing) platform for iPhone applications that people find it very easy to move onto the next thing that catches their fancy. The lack of a "try-before-you-buy" feature means iPhone users have no choice but to take the plunge, and given that most iPhone applications are free and the ones that do cost money are very inexpensive, there's little incentive to carefully shop around for the one application that best meets your needs.

Only about 10 percent of iPhone applications appear to retain an audience over time, and most of those are games, entertainment applications such as movie listings, and things like Facebook ("their user sessions must be off the charts," Yardley said).

But developers are still making plenty of money from the other 90 percent, he said. As noted, people are very willing to try new iPhone applications, meaning that building a better mousetrap is still a very viable business model for the world of mobile computing. His advice for developers is to get your money up front, and charge something for your application rather than trying to depend on a free/ad-subsidized model, because the number of people viewing those ads will plummet the day after the application lands on their iPhones.

At some point, however, Apple will need to find a better way to help developers promote their applications within an ocean. "The App Store fails as a promotional mechanism. There's only so much screen real estate" that Apple can use within the App Store window to promote applications, Yardley said, and if you don't get on those Top 100 or Staff Favorites lists, your application languishes.

Yardley thinks there is still a great deal of opportunity for developers on the App Store, which isn't that surprising given he makes his living by advising iPhone developers. And it's true that if the installed base of iPhones continues to grow, there will be more and more niche opportunities to cater to the needs of high-school students and seniors, and everyone in between.

Still, how many more currency conversion (37), recipe (67), and fart-joke (30) applications do iPhone users really need, especially if they aren't using the ones they've already got?

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Google grinds closer to Chrome release for Mac

Google is coming a bit closer to releasing a working version of its Chrome browser for Mac.

Programmers for the company had been building an engine that could render Web pages, but it only ran within a simple framework called the test shell. Now they've begun hooking up the renderer to a full-fledged browser, which among other things can handle multiple tasks at the same time. That's key for a real application, especially one such as Chrome that isolates each browser tab into its own computing process.

The result of the work: a screenshot of Chrome running on Mac OS X posted to the Chromium developer mailing list. "Now we can call it Chrome!" crowed programmer Avi Drissman wrote.

Granted, it's a view of Chrome failing to properly show a Web page, but it's a step in the functional direction. Google has set a deadline of shipping Chrome for the Mac and Linux by end of June.

It may not look good, but this screenshot actually marks progress in getting Chrome to run on the Mac.Moving Chrome from its initial incarnation as a Windows application to Mac OS X and Linux hasn't been easy. Ben Goodger, a Firefox programmer who now leads Chrome's interface work, griped about the difficult balance between preserving Chrome software across multiple operating systems while coping with the different abilities of each.Google chose to split some of the Chrome interface into a Mac OS X-specific incarnation, despite the maintenance difficulties that imposes, but the choice isn't as easy when wrestling with Linux's interface, he said in a January message.
Goodger said that after some teeth-gnashing, Google eventually decided to create the Linux version of Chrome using the GTK package of graphical interface components used with the GNOME user interface.

"My initial thought was that a Windows-clone would be acceptable on Linux provided the performance of the app itself was outstanding, given the general reluctance of some of the team working on Linux towards UI (user interface). But they stood up and made their case for a GTK UI," Goodger said in a February 4 message, "and...that's what we've decided to do."

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