Dell quits netbooks, says 'thin and powerful is where it's at'
While very few are still buying netbooks, many manufacturers have continued to release the small Intel Atom-powered computers (see Asus, Toshiba, etc.). However, Dell isn't going to be one of those companies.
Context & Ripple Effects
Dell's exit closes a three-year arc that began when it announced plans to offer a netbook back in September 2008, chasing what was then the fastest-growing corner of the PC market. By April 2010, CNET was already reporting the netbook market may have peaked, and Dell's move is the first major-brand acknowledgment that the category's decline is structural rather than cyclical.
The timing matters because 'thin and powerful' has a lineage in this corpus: Business Week profiled the world's thinnest notebook back in May 2007, and AMD pitched a new thin laptop category in January 2009. Dell is aligning itself with that design direction just as Asus and Toshiba, per the article, keep shipping small Intel Atom machines into a shrinking buyer base.
First-order effects
- Dell stops selling Atom-powered netbooks, leaving Asus and Toshiba as the named manufacturers still releasing them into a market where very few buyers remain.
- Dell's product roadmap shifts toward thin-and-powerful laptops, putting its lineup in direct competition with premium ultraportable designs rather than budget netbooks.
Second-order effects
- Asus and Toshiba face a choice between defending a fading low-margin category with Intel Atom parts or following Dell toward thin designs — every additional exit raises their cost of staying.
- Intel loses one marquee customer for Atom in notebooks, increasing pressure on the chipmaker to reposition Atom or cede the thin-laptop segment to higher-margin architectures.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the netbook segment consolidates around a shrinking set of budget vendors while mainstream PC makers converge on thin-and-powerful designs, eroding the price floor that netbooks established for the laptop market.
The trend: PC design is rotating from cheap, small Atom netbooks toward thin-and-powerful laptops, with brand-tier exits like Dell's marking where each manufacturer lands in that shift.