The Auctioneer-the official blog of Auction.ph

I recently attended a forum on Net Books—a burgeoning marketing-driven technology that underscores laptop portability without the belittling price tag of gadget smallness. That was a mouthful. The forum was organized by my favorite press people in the world, the Cyberpress. And like most Cyberpress events, despite seemingly esoteric topics, the discussions always turn out to be very informative, incredibly accessible and tremendously entertaining. (How’s that for PR!)

Major laptop players were there to flaunt their wares. Like every other brand name regardless of industry, it is quite amusing how they can always find a pioneering technology attributed to their company. The frequently used rhetoric may sound something like this: “Yes, we accept that you were the first to use a display screen with a built-in electric fan but we were the first who made that fan dual-purpose. Using our laptop, you can actually dry your hair while online shopping in Auction.ph.”

What can I say, whoever said that this life is a race should get a Nobel Prize for clichés. The good thing about how the cliché works in real life is that you can always start a race on your own. The key is to come up with a race interesting (and potentially lucrative) enough for other people to join. Because it’s not a race if you are the only one running. It’s just exercise. In e-commerce, maybe we can start a race for space and the goal is to be the first one to auction off a volcano in Venus. Any takers?

Pardon the digression, but going back to Net Books and the simmering trend in technology, which I have observed is specialization. When you think about it, it is not exactly new, it just evolved. I imagine hunter-gatherer societies crafting specialized spears for boars and customized baskets for different types of grains. It’s basically the same thing now. We have a desktop PC for the home, we have a regular laptop for work and with Net Books, we now have a smaller laptop for “MOOFING” (mobile-out-of-office).

Asus EEE PC

I was first introduced to the Net Book by our transient gadget guru, Abe Olandres. In one of our many meetings, he brought an Asus EEE PC. It wasn’t called a Net Book back then. Back then, I referred to it as the cheapest way to own a laptop. He was raving about how he loved the portability. And it was lightweight too. He said he dropped it, accidentally of course, several times and it still runs like a charm. He can turn the power back on and he can enjoy hours of fun playing dress-up with the obese penguin. (That last part is not actually true. I am the one who actually enjoys the game and not Abe. I never imagined how creepy penguins can look with a moustache.) Interestingly, Abe didn’t feel as guilty dropping the laptop precisely because it was affordable. If he dropped a Macbook Air…I don’t know but isn’t the Macbook Air supposed to float? :)

Inevitably, sales of the smallish laptop spiked, despite the ridiculously crowded keyboard. The package should have come with a device. Something like a glove, an extension of chubby digits that tapers off in the end. It doesn’t come much of a surprise then that 80% of the buyers were actually women. Well, smaller fingers. Not to be gender-biased, but I think smaller gadgets appeal more to women than men. I think you would be hard-pressed to find insecure males lounging in coffee shops hunched over a tiny screen.

The Asus EEE PC’s market success triggered the “me-too” initiatives of other major players, hence, the rise of the Net Books, laptop devices that are easy to carry and endowed with amazing powers of connectivity. An interesting question came up regarding the online gaming market. The online gaming market is massive. E Games alone has an estimated 9M gamers locally. Needless to say, it is a market you can’t deny. The answer was that the Net Books were not really created for the gaming market. Focus groups showed that gamers wanted their screens LARGE. Blood spurting out of the orifices could be a come on. In a general sense, the Net Books were designed for people who want to go online, wherever they can find a hotspot. With gaming out of the question, the Net Books should then deliver other Internet-enabled services. Checking emails would be a major draw. Blogging? Sure. Perez Hilton likes writing in coffee shops. SNS and YouTube? It is hard to say. But yes, entertainment on the go would be an attraction.

The Net Books are specialized products in that they serve, or at the very least, market to a very specific need. The need to go online when you are mobile. I also noticed that nowadays, it seems that technology is creating needs and not just addressing them.

In the earlier days of the mobile phone, manufacturers were racing to produce the single phone that could do it all. Of course, consumer tendency is to always go with value for money and product developers saw that as a challenge, and for marketers, an opportunity. Later on, the trend shifted. Possibly for two reasons: because marketers played the lifestyle card and consumers became more interested in “personality.” The realm of gadgetry expanded in terms of target market and became more of a lifestyle item rather than the workhorse it was originally conceived to be. Sony Ericsson created product segments specializing in either music or digital imaging. Nokia followed the same strategy and introduced phones that meant business. I even remember sitting in a briefing once and the speaker enjoined us to play a game. He presented a slide show of products and he would ask the audience if they were real or not, if they would sell or not. I remember him presenting a cell phone created especially for dogs. What do you think? Real or not? Whatever the answer was, I’m sure it wouldn’t sell. Unless dogs figure out how texting works.

Before, it was up to us to decide on our individual personalities. Nowadays, we have gadgets that can help us define the kind of person we are. The range of product choices out there is so diverse and so specialized that it can actually aid you in profiling yourself. It may sound ambiguous but I’m sure you can sense it too. “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll know who you are.” That cliché should be outdated very soon. Soon, we should all be going, “show me your gadgets and I’ll know who you are.”

PC and laptop manufacturers seem to be following the mobile phone trend. The cost of processing and computing power is dropping hence the drop in laptop prices. In effect, manufacturers see the advantage in the economics and they now find it sensible to invest in “specialized” offerings. Economically, specialization makes more sense than customization and personalization. You can think of it this way. Manufacturers can assign you to your demographic but it’s up to you to stand out. Because for them, it’s going to be too expensive.

Acer Aspire One

The Net Book’s price range is anywhere from Php14,000.00 to Php40,000.00. Still very affordable. About a year ago, I bought a regular-sized laptop with only 60GB of hard drive memory for Php50,000.00. When I compared it with Acer’s Aspire One, a sleek, shiny, sexy Net Book, I felt cheated. The Aspire One is only Php30,500 (Auction.ph pricing) with 160GB of hard drive memory. It runs on XP and my laptop on Vista. That’s a double-whammy right there.

“It’s just a fad.” That was the other comment I distinctly remember from the forum. Yes, it could very well be, but if costs of materials continue to drop, it would enable manufacturers to churn “fads” one after the other, making devices more specialized and creating new needs in the process.

Yes, the race is on.

See more Net Books for sale in Auction.ph