An Apple executive has lashed out against netbooks, calling the small and light laptops unusable.
Exec slates current crop of mini laptops
Netbooks have cramped keyboards, small screens, "junky" hardware and bad software, said Tim Cook, chief operating officer of Apple, during a fiscal second-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. They don't offer the "consumer experience" that Apple wants to offer through its Mac hardware.
"It's not a space ... we're interested in," Cook said. "It's a stretch to call them a personal computer."
People who want to use email or surf the web can instead buy products such as Apple's iPhone or an iPod Touch, Cook said.
Netbooks are small and low-cost laptops that are designed for people to run basic applications such as web surfing. Netbooks are priced between £200 and £400, with screens anywhere between 7in and 12in.
Apple's cheapest laptop costs £700, and it would rather focus on offering quality through its Mac products, Cook said.
Apple reacted strongly to netbooks because the increased adoption of that type of product is annoying them, said Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates.
"If they didn't bother about [netbooks], they wouldn't comment about it," Kay said. Netbooks may not be ideal today, but there is plenty of room for them to mature, he said.
"They get in as a poor cousin like any disruptive technology, but the quality will improve," Kay said.
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David said: Ignore the Netbook market at your own peril I say even though there is a measure of truth in what tim is sayingsmall screen amp keyboard he should look at what he is comparing it to Iphone 35 inch screen virtual keyboard and then tell the world there isnt a market for netboooksAlso Tim 80 of all users really only want to surf the net knock out the odd document and email so it pays for them to buy a netbook which when you tally up the price between the iphone phone plan included and the netbooks the better option for most people would be the netbooklBigger screen 102 inches v 35 inches physical keyboardNetbook v Virtual Keyboard ipod phone and touchSwollow your pride Tim and learn from microsoft who almost made the same mistake of writing off the netbook market also at their own peril