The netbook market has been slowly but surely disappearing, and now there"s word that one major notebook maker is abandoning netbooks entirely, at least in the US. Liliputing.com reports it has heard from an unnamed executive at Toshiba that the Toshiba America division has no plans to release any more netbooks in the US.
Toshiba did show off a new netbook at CES 2012 in January, the NB510; however, that model will only be sold in international markets. For the US, Toshiba will be releasing Ultrabook-style notebooks, which are light but are also more expensive than netbooks, which tend to have prices below $400.
As the article notes, many other notebook makers such as Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony have either officially announced they won"t be making any more netbooks or have not released any new models in some time. Asus, Acer and HP are still selling netbooks but sales of these kinds of notebooks have been falling for some time.
It would appear that the netbook craze that hit laptop manufacturers a couple of years ago has died down quickly and that we will likely see more Ultrabook designs from those company. We could also see more hybrid notebook-tablets such as the one that Dell is reportedly developing for Windows 8 and its launch later this year.
Source: Liliputing.com