driving the ultra-mobile enterprise

A few years ago, I was writing embedded microprocessor firmware for a small, eleven-employee power monitoring sensor shop when a feud broke out between the three engineers and the two salesmen.  The firm was purchasing some new laptops, to be shared around as they were needed, and the two groups wanted different things from their notebooks.  The engineers wanted to be able to sit down at a foreign desk, at home or abroad, and get work done with the complex software they used to design things.  If I’d been senior enough to have a hope at taking laptops from the pool, I’d have wanted the same. 

But the salesmen wanted a smaller, more portable machine, something sleek enough to whip out at a trade show and send a quick email with, or jot down notes about their latest sales lead.  The sensor shop compromised, buying an ultraportable and another, more traditional business laptop.

These days, that same instrument shop would have more options, because of the exploding popularity of netbooks.  The tiny notebooks which burst from the gate in November 2007 with the launch of the Eee PC have since sold 15 million units, with 30 million netbook sales likely in 2009.  The form factor is almost exactly what the salesmen wanted, and costs are very low.  Although netbooks were initially aimed at consumers, new models aimed at the Enterprise, with Enterprise-focused features discussed elsewhere on this site, may soon encourage business to begin taking notice.  And what will this do to the desktop?

The venerable stalwart of computing has been taking blows lately, with ASPs way down, attention drooping, and sales eclipsed by laptops for the first time ever in 2008.  This has led some to prematurely predict the decline, or even the demise, of the desktop.  While this is probably overzealous, mobility has been hurting the desktop; the old rule of “a tower under every desk” has been broken.  Will the netbook trend sap the desktop further?  Maybe, but it seems more likely that the Netbook craze will reinvigorate the desktop by restoring multitier computing.

Consumers have increasingly been using laptops as sole systems, bypassing desktops entirely, and the world of business is increasingly moving in this direction.  If Netbooks come to control a significant part of the mobile computing market, though, this will not be an option, and officeworkers will need other computers.  With mobility covered, desktops may be more popular for this purpose than laptops, and a Desktop-Netbook two-tiered system may become more standard.  To the tower under every desk would be added a netbook in every pocket. 

Large screens, expansive storage space, and upgradability would become key, with officeworkers using desktops to store data for their Netbooks and drive larger displays for use in the office.  The low cost of Netbooks and their low capabilities make this scenario more affordable than a Desktop/Laptop ecosystem.  Instead of signaling its death knell, netbooks may reinvigorate the desktop.