Netbook Race Heats Up

Gateway has pushed its way into the crowded netbook playing field, offering up another $299 and, as one study reports, it won't be the last vendor jumping on the mobile computing gadget bandwagon.

A new study from U.K.-based Coda Research Consultancy reports consumers hungry for both netbook and laptops will push mobile broadband revenues to $48 billion by 2017, with a user base hitting 418 million worldwide and even bigger numbers when it comes to data use. Gadget adoption will quadruple data consumption from today to about 1.8 exabytes of traffic monthly. The study says data use will be driven primarily for a need for video, accounting for over half of traffic by 2017.

Coda's report comes a week after a new DisplayResearch study that predicts 20 percent adoption growth worldwide just this year.

No wonder everyone's jumping into the netbook pool.The mini PC devices give great Web and email accessibility — much nicer than those snazzy smartphones (think iPhone and Pre) and very easy to carry wherever you go (think long laptop lines at airport security).

The Gateway LT2000, working off Intel Atom processors, offers up a 10.1-inch LED-backlit display. Sleek barely describes it as it  measures an inch wide and weighs 2.62 pounds (heck my pocketbook weighs more than that on most days.)

It's obviously aimed at the fashion conscious consumer, arriving in "NightSky Black" and cherry red with 1GB of memory and 160GB of hard drive space. Gateway apparently knows the market trend expected as it's also packed in a Web cam that can capture live video.

Hmmm. One has to wonder how much longer Apple can stick to its guns in not going the netbook route. One would think MacBook fanatics would love to get a mini version of their favorite laptop.

The very best part about all this, though, is that more products mean more competition and that means cheaper prices. I won't be surprised to see the average price tag of $299 hit about half that by late October as vendors gear up for the busy holiday sales season.