Posted on Saturday, May 16 2009 @ 21:22 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Intel revealed some retail chains were seeing netbook return rates in the 30 percent range, but explains bad marketing was to blame for this. Intel's Sean Maloney said these resellers were shipping netbooks as notebooks without pointing out the difference between the two product categories:
"In the first period--June, July, August of last year--there were some in the retail channels that were shipping (Netbooks) as notebooks," Sean Maloney said in a question-and-answer session that was streamed over the Web. "They were running ads that had a continuum of notebooks and had this Netbooky thing in there--it was called a notebook. They had very high return rates and a couple of these guys had return rates in the 30 percent range, which is a disaster."
Maloney continued. "So we gently went back to some of those chains and said if you segment them differently and state up front what they do and don't do, things will be healthier. You've seen some of the European channels saying this (Netbook) product does not do X and being very black and white and very clear."
More info
at CNET.
