Digital Home Thoughts: MSI Hikes Price on Their Wind Notebook, Cancels Orders

I was reading a post over on jkontherun about MSI hiking the price on their Wind notebook, and on the Mobius discussion list we had a discussion about the way prices have been going up, and up, on all these new "cheap" notebooks. I've been noticing the same thing over the past year - Asus has been inching up the price tag on their EEE PCs with each new revision (and they never even hit their originally announced price of $199 USD), and certainly most of the new players out there are coming in a a higher price point. It's a huge mistake to abandon the $299 price point because as long as the most basic of functionality is there (Web browser + wireless) that's all some people need. I'm pleased to see some slightly larger, more full-featured notebooks coming out though, because I'm personally willing to pay more than $299 to get enhanced functionality. In fact, the $599 version of the HP Mini Note bothered me not because of the price, but because it didn't have a CPU powerful enough to play DVD-resolution video and the battery life was sub-par.

The seemingly obvious point that most OEMs seem to be missing is form-factor matters for some people more than price. It's not like HP already had a laptop the size of the Mini Note in their line-up, and the $499 price point was the only interesting thing about it. No, they introduced a whole new size of notebook and while some consumers will buy only on price, others (albeit a smaller number) will buy on form factor and functionality (many of the people reading this site for instance). Because if I want a small, 9" screen device, it's not about price for me - I'm not going to buy a $499 clunker laptop because the form factor is wrong. I'd pay $999 for a device that small that had great battery life, a great keyboard, and could double as movie playback machine. In fact, I've paid $2500 for such a machine in the past: the Fujitsu P5000 and P7000 laptops I've owned.

Ultimately I think a two-pronged approach to this market is going to unfold: you'll have someone taking the $299 price point (and lower) market, and you'll have someone offering the more expensive ($399+) products that offer more laptop-like features. I think the market needs both, but the lower price point is where the greater sales volumes are going to be. I hope the manufacturers of these devices figure that out.