Qualcomm’s smartbooks: I think I get it - but will the consumers and the carriers?

Posted by Jamie Moss Monday, February 8th, 2010

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Qualcomm has been promoting the Snapdragon chipset for several years now. In 2008 they keenly publicised the processing advantages that Snapdragon had over Intel’s rival embedded processor for portable devices, the Atom. Yet 2008 became the year that the Atom decisively took the then-emerging netbook market by storm, establishing a position of dominance that has yet to be challenged.

The purpose of Snapdragon

Curiously, despite the purported advantages of Snapdragon Qualcomm has continuously and steadfastly asserted that the chip was never meant for use in netbooks. Instead it was apparently designed to power high-end smartphones - the first of which was the Toshiba TG01, launched in early-2009 – as well as a class of device that Qualcomm has christened the ’smartbook’.

Positioned as neither a smartphone nor a netbook, but as something that merges the best features of both, the smartbook is intended to be a completely new product segment. It has to be said however, that despite Qualcomm’s highly-respected status as the world’s largest fabless semiconductor manufacturer, their explanation of the value proposition for the smartbook (and by association their justification for the development of the Snapdragon chip) has not been very convincing.

Exactly what smartbooks are supposed to be used for - and who is supposed to want to buy one - has simply not been made clear. We already have a booming netbook market for facilitating portable computing and desktop-equivalent web browsing on-the-go. So unsurprisingly those of us that have taken the time to acknowledge Qualcomm’s smartbook proposal have tended to interpret the potential end product as either a big phone that has no voice connectivity, or as a netbook that is less functional; being intended as it is for web-based activities only.

So what exactly is a smartbook then?

If my interpretation is in any way correct, smartbooks are a combination of netbook-type processing power, with mobile phone-type connectivity, wrapped up in a suite of cloud-based services. On-demand connectivity is definitely the most critical component of the smartbook proposition, in exactly the same way that receiving a constant signal is fundamental to the function of a mobile phone.

Functionally and physically smartbooks are a ‘lighter’ product than netbooks, simplified in terms of client-side software such as the operating system and applications, as well as in terms of hardware components such as hard disks. Plus they place a renewed emphasis on ultra-portability. Ultra-portability was originally a key feature of netbooks too, but it is one that has been increasingly sidelined as OEMs have (obscurely) attempted to make netbooks bigger and more like laptops.

Browser-based operating systems like Chrome OS are the perfect software partners for smartbooks, as they also require always-on connectivity to the Internet in order for consumers to access their associated web-based applications (or ‘web apps’). The entire value proposition for smartbooks is based on permanent Internet connectivity, although, it is important to note that smartbooks are not simply netbooks with embedded modems. For the netbook is a standalone computing device first and a connected device second, while a smartbook is designed to be a connected device always.

So where do smartbooks ‘fit in’?

The way I see it smartbooks are not a competitor to netbooks but are an alternative instead. Not everybody who uses a desktop computer spends their time engrossed in word processing, spreadsheets and databases. Many of the consumers who own computers nowadays use them first and foremost for Internet-based activities. They spend their time surfing the web and using software that is entirely dependent upon Internet connectivity, such as instant messengers, music download managers, streaming media players and peer-to-peer file sharing applications.

These are the people that smartbooks are most suitable for, the people who would happily own a netbook but who, more often that not, would only want to use the browser. They do not need a fully-fledged desktop operating systems or a suite of office software, but prefer to create and manage their content within the online world. Living their computing lives within the browser, by using flickr to store and organise their photos, social networking websites and webmail to keep in touch with their friends; and participation in multiplayer online games for entertainment.

Consequently it may be best to think of a smartbook as a literal ‘net book’, i.e. an ultra-portable computer that genuinely is designed for Internet access only. It is arguably a shame for Qualcomm that the term had already been adopted to describe computers with a sub-notebook form factor. Especially seeing as how the term ‘netbook’ has transpired to be something of a misnomer in itself, with netbooks proving to be surprisingly capable standalone computing and gaming devices - and not limited at all to simply browsing the Internet.

Smartbooks as a platform

So why spend so much time theorising about the concept of the smartbook in a content and applications blog? The answer is because of the potential that a smartbook-like product has to help bring to market a new type of mobile value added service – namely, value added services for mobile broadband. The layering of additional value added services on top of mobile broadband is something that could help to create a more profitable wireless data business model for carriers. It could raise mobile broadband up beyond just being a means of access to the Internet, to being an actual service with individual service options, that could be monetised on a per-subscriber basis and used to promote operator differentiation.

Smartbooks as devices are perfect candidates for distribution via the operator channel, far more so than netbooks. Without cellular connectivity a netbook is still a very useful standalone device which is why so many of them are sold at full retail price off the shelves of electronics stores. But a smartbook without cellular connectivity is only as useful as a phone with no SIM. This makes it a device more attuned to the wireless carriers’ core business model of providing connectivity than a netbook is. So it would be in the carriers’ interest to subsidise smartbook devices for their customers, amortising the cost over the duration of a mobile broadband contract, in order to help promote mobile broadband take-up as well as to use smartbooks as a platform to introduce additional mobile-specific broadband value added services.

Value added services for broadband Internet access are relatively new, period - and within the fixed line market they are currently focused on the provision of Internet security, home monitoring, online gaming and access to exclusive multimedia content. But due to the fact that consumers purchase mobile broadband for the sake of continuity of service, it stands to reason that whatever fixed broadband value added services they become accustomed to using, they would wish to have access to when mobile too. In addition to which, wireless carriers may be able to provide extra mobile-specific broadband value added services that fixed providers cannot offer. Such as location based services enabled by virtue of the embedded A-GPS functionality that resides within the Snapdragon chip, for example.

‘Getting it’

So I think I ‘get’ smartbooks now. But it seems too soon to tell if there will be an actual market for them. Pricing will certainly be key, if they cost more than netbooks then consumers will surely plump for the more capable standalone device should smartbooks be sold at an unsubsidised retail price. Although if connectivity is the key feature of smartbooks, then connectivity provision should really be the channel through which smartbooks are distributed too. Although it is possible that they may just end up being sold off the shelf, with users then having to go and buy SIM-only mobile broadband tariffs to use with them.

I don’t know how smartbooks will ultimately be sold, or how aggressively Qualcomm will push the concept to carriers, especially considering that Qualcomm will not be designing and assembling the finished products. But if smartbooks are simply distributed in the same fashion as netbooks are today, it seems as if some major opportunities would have been missed; opportunities for the strengthening of operators’ mobile broadband proposition, for the validation of smartbooks as a genuinely new product category; and of course for the promotion of the uptake of them as a product.

Their future will depend on whether or not operators pick them up to use as a tool for the sale of their services - in the same way that they do today with mobile phones - as well as on how expensive the units will be and whether or not the all-important consumer will understand and accept their value proposition. But unfortunately none of this is likely to have been helped by the length of time that Snapdragon has gone largely unused by device manufacturers, nor by the fact that it has taken so long to bring the first smartbook to market.