Consumers see netbooks as secondary devices

A survey carried out by ABI Research among 1,000 consumers found that only 11 percent of potential users would use a netbook as their primary computer, while 79 percent see netbooks as a secondary device to be used in addition to a notebook or desktop PC. However, ABI Research analyst Philip Solis does note that netbooks will hurt sales of laptops somewhat:

Netbooks are much smaller and affordable compared to fully-functional laptops, but they do not have optical disc drives integrated and come with rather slow Intel Atom or Celeron M central processing units, moderate graphics adapters as well as insufficient amount of random access memory to perform serious tasks. Netbooks are easy to carry, but they will not be able even to run a large Excel book or multimedia-rich presentation.

“Even as a device that is secondary to the PC, this has to cut into the laptop market somewhat. When considering another laptop as an additional device mostly for browsing the web and using other Internet-based communications applications, consumers will find netbooks to be an appropriate alternative,” added Mr. Solis.

More info at X-bit Labs.