Does the Netbook Have a Life?

The continued growth in cloud adoption may radically change netbook adoption rates.

"As more organizations explore a virtualized desktop and cloud-based productivity options, the netbook could be an interesting conduit to a world featuring 'Everything as a Service' -- providing traditional I/O to enable productivity tasks, but at a lower-cost, more portable profile,"

explained Deloitte analyst William Briggs.

Trends have always come and gone, but when it comes to all-things-tech, the speed of change is faster than an Internet minute. It isn't that tech users are all that fickle; it's that the environment around them is constantly changing. Take the "smartphones vs. laptops war" for example. It isn't that either won; rather, the war left the battlefield.

No one bothers to rant for one side or the other any more. By the time netbooks and tablets made a debut on the mobile scene, no one thought to ask which of all these devices would be the winner-take-all king of the WiFi hill. That's because this is clearly not a strictly hardware contest anymore.

"The most important effect we have seen is that content matters more than screen size," Brian Levine, president and cofounder of Innerscope Research, told TechNewsWorld. "A simple thought experiment would be this: Which is more engaging, CSPAN on a 3D IMAX, or "Avatar" on a mobile phone? Obviously, unless you are a political junky and don't like the color blue, Avatar wins."

Considering content is king and netbooks lack both the power of laptops for content creation and the appeal of tablets for content consumption, will they now disappear into oblivion?

The Story Told in Numbers

Intel reports that all leading PC makers -- including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, LG, Samsung, MSI and Toshiba -- offer Intel-based netbooks, with more than 100 designs in market.

"Currently, there are about 40 million netbooks shipped in 2010, which is roughly three to four times more than tablets," Intel spokesperson Suzy Ramirez told TechNewsWorld. "Since its launch, Intel Atom processors for netbooks alone have shipped more than 80 million chips with 100s of millions expected in the future. In fact, netbooks are one of the fastest-ramping consumer products ever."

If one were to judge the popularity of netbooks and tablets according to media mentions alone, Intel's reported numbers would appear suspicious. But no, independent sources do confirm that netbooks are outselling tablets four to one. To be precise, just over 11 million media tablets and 43 million netbooks will ship worldwide this year, according to ABI Research.

"Apple has sold a few million iPads in its first quarter, which is great for creating a new market," said ABI Research Principal Analyst Jeff Orr, "but early adoption of media tablets is not outpacing netbooks."

Indeed, tablet costs are a bit pricey for the average recession-battered consumer. "The iPad average selling price above US$650 isn't driving mass adoption," said Orr. "Competition, especially on price, is needed." And so it is that netbook sales Increase sales with VerticalResponse. Free trial. continue to climb, albeit at a slower pace than was predicted just a year ago.

"Nonetheless, 43 million netbook shipments are good growth -- just not the meteoric pace of the past couple of years," said Orr.

The Cloud as a Netbook Ally

Most of the criticism of netbooks is centered on its shallow performance compared to a full-sized laptop. But this drawback may disappear as the cloud grows larger. That could potentially mean that laptops, rather than netbooks, may fall by the wayside.

"Netbooks remain an interesting play for productivity tasks at a lower price point," Deloitte Consulting director William Briggs told TechNewsWorld. "But full-featured laptops will continue to persist -- basically until the cloud vision is fully realized, which is a number of years away."

Enterprises have been lukewarm toward netbook adoption. Interest doesn't appear to be growing despite the escalation in cloud adoption and desktop virtualization -- two developments one would think would favor netbook use, as they leverage its lighter weight and cost while fortifying its processing and storage weaknesses.

"What we are seeing with enterprise Enterprise Payment Security 2.0 Whitepaper from CyberSource customers using netbooks at the moment is primarily as test pilots and proof of concept demos," Lawrence Imeish, principal consultant of Dimension Data's North America converged communications group, told TechNewsWorld.

Indeed, tablets are running into the same situation -- slow adoption on the enterprise front. The tablets' use-case is "almost entirely consumer-based," reports ABI, and the enterprise market for tablets as a real replacement for laptops and smartphones is "virtually nonexistent."

The continued growth in cloud adoption may radically change the adoption rates of both netbooks and tablets, although netbooks have a decided advantage in that regard.

"As more organizations explore a virtualized desktop and cloud-based productivity options, the netbook could be an interesting conduit to a world featuring 'Everything as a Service' -- providing traditional I/O (keyboard, touchpad) to enable productivity tasks, but at a lower-cost, more portable profile," explained Deloitte's Briggs.

However, the cloud is unlikely to be an advantage of netbooks over laptops.

"As traditional productivity and enterprise technology suites persist, so will the full-featured laptop," Briggs added.

Indeed, the cloud may not be a sufficient edge for netbooks, as the cloud will most likely power all devices more or less equally.

"In the coming years, I see netbook marketing being squeezed between ever more powerful tablets and smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper laptops," predicted Dimension Data's Imeish.

Netbook manufacturers, however, are not just sitting idly by to find out.
Between Tolerated and Banned

"Netbooks continue to see great momentum, and Intel expects this to continue with new hybrid and convertible designs planned for CES and throughout 2011, with examples such as the Dell Inspiron duo," noted Intel's Ramirez.

HP also recently released a line of "business" netbooks in an attempt to break through enterprise resistance in time to sync with cloud momentum. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is pushing its new Macbook Air, which runs a full OS rather than a glorified smartphone OS, into the fold -- even though it loses the price advantage of a traditional netbook in the process.

Enterprises meanwhile, are pushing back some on the commercialization of IT and blocking adoption on some of the newer mobile toys.

"Most organizations have created lists of blessed, tolerated and banned devices to help control the sprawl," said Deloitte's Briggs. "Netbooks today typically find themselves between 'tolerated' and 'banned' categories."

How does such a classification bode for the future of netbooks in the enterprise? Turns out, it likely has no bearing at all.

"Consumer demand will drive the level and pace of netbook adoption," said Briggs. "As tablet support has increased exponentially, based on the iPad's sales, netbooks could achieve more strategic dispositions if stakeholders demanded it."

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McAfee Warns - "Malware Is on the Move"

Mobile operating systems are the new favorite target of malware, and social engineering remains the favorite old standby for launching attacks. Tried-and-true preventive care works best.

"Never give information via email, smartphone or on the Web, and verify independently before you click on any unknown text or email message, game, application or security update,"

advises UVa security expert Karen McDowell.

Cybercriminals are following innocent consumers away from email Increase sales with VerticalResponse. Free trial. and toward more popular, smartphone-style platforms, McAfee reported Tuesday.

"New mobile malware in 2010 increased by 46 percent compared with 2009," noted McAfee spokesperson Joris Evers.

Among the likeliest targets in 2010, Symbian and Android platforms were splattered by Trojans and bots with names like "SymbOS/Zitmo.A" and "Android/Geinimi."

"Consumers need to realize that mobiles, whether smartphone or tablet, are mini computers," said David Gorodyansky, CEO of AnchorFree. "This means all the vulnerabilities of a computer exist, often with a less-protected OS."

"From a hacker's point of view, the large user base created by wide scale adoption of iOS (iPhone) and Android will increasingly make these platforms a target, and I definitely expect to see some high-profile mobile attacks in the coming year,"

Cenzic CMO Mandeep Khera told TechNewsWorld.

"Smartphone access should be a concern to corporations that don't want employees accessing company secrets via unsecured mobile networks," Khera told TechNewsWorld. "For consumers, as banks and e-commerce sites deploy apps that give customers unprecedented access to their bank accounts, security Enterprise Payment Security 2.0 Whitepaper from CyberSource becomes more important than ever."

Unlike their mobile partners in crime, spam bots -- including Bredolab, Lethic, Xarvester, and parts of the Zeus botnet -- have gone dormant in droves this year,.

"Concurrently, spam accounted for 80 percent of total email traffic in Q4 2010, the lowest point since the first quarter of 2007," McAfee's Evers told TechNewsWorld.

The Bot Pack

Like a flu pandemic, botnet infections were particularly acute in Q4 2010, with Rustock, Cutwail and Bobax leading the bot pack. Social media sites, like mosquitoes, often acted as disease vectors.

"Whether we are using smartphones or computers, social engineering attacks are still the primary attack vector, and a major vector in the spread of botnet infections,"

University of Virginia information security analyst Karen McDowell, PhD, GCIH, told TechNewsWorld.

McAfee advises tablet and smartphone users to watch out for Zeus-Murofet, Conficker, and Koobface botnets specifically, and more generally, phishing URLs from the IRS, gift cards, rewards accounts, and social networking accounts.

Phishing vectors spread bot diseases when users click on phishing emails, answer phishing phone calls, or click on text messages that "appear to come from your carrier," McDowell explained, adding that tried-and-true preventive care works best. "Never give information via email, smartphone or on the Web, and verify independently before you click on any unknown text or email message, game, application or security update."

More preventive options: "Don't log onto unprotected WiFi, and use a VPN to encrypt and secure your browsing, which acts as a secure, encrypted tunnel for your communications," AnchorFree's Gorodyansky told TechNewsWorld.

Malware's Mantra

Twenty million new pieces of malware -- nearly 55,000 new malware threats every day -- plastered the cybersphere in 2010, migrating toward smartphones because "cybercriminals are keeping tabs on what's popular and what will have the biggest impact from the smallest effort," said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs.

"Think globally, act locally" might be malware's new mantra, with threats that "now tend to match the types of users, habits and events that are specific to a region," McAfee's Evers added. Global criminal favorites include AutoRun malware such as Generic!atr; banking Trojans and downloaders such as PWS or Generic.dx; and Web-based exploits such as StartPage and Exploit-MS04-028, the McAfee report claims.

To avoid malware, treat search terms and Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) products with extra care, McAfee advises. Of the top 100 search results, 51 percent led to malicious sites. And throughout 2010, malware developers exploited weaknesses in Flash and PDF, a trend McAfee sees continuing.

Despite the advice, pests will persist, driven to infect by "a general lack of awareness towards the need for security," Gorodyansky explained.

"This is the same as it was for computers, when most people thought they were completely safe once they installed an antivirus program," he recalled.

"It really doesn't matter what type of device is used -- the steps to secure a Web application haven't changed," Sam Shelby, e-government coordinator for the City of Columbia, Missouri, told TechNewsWorld. "You can never trust input: always authenticate, validate and sanitize input data."

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