I would love to hear more about how you reason to "absurdly small market."
When I look at the market, and especially after the pretty remarkable success of the iPad, I see a clear line from smartphone, through smart tablet, to smart laptop. My expectation is that Apple will release an iOS based version of the Macbook Air for just this reason.
This is my reasoning for that expectation. The iPad has taken a chunk out of the laptop market. A number of folks who would have bought a laptop bought an iPad instead this year. The number one reason that folks give for not replacing their laptop with an iPad is that "they can't type on it." and carrying multiple elements around (bluetooth keyboard etc) is inconvenient.
When you get a device which has a high quality screen, and an attached keyboard, and can be used anywhere on 3G, you will capture a much bigger chunk of the laptop market.
Now granted, I've been working this since 1999 when I pitched the 'appliance' laptop to Venture funds (they declined to fund because they didn't feel anyone could ship a product against windows and succeed), and I pitched it to the Android team when I was at Google (and while I take no credit at all for ChromeOS it did a lot of the things I had proposed in my JaDE project, so they were on the same wavelength). When I did my VC pitch I had commissioned some surveys and found that a significant chunk of people who owned a computer didn't want the "compute" part, they wanted just the web browsing/emailing/document prep part. Further it bothered them that their computer had all this stuff that they never used, and was often a source of exploits by third parties.
So as I pushed inside Google for this the primary push back was "Ok, I got that already, its my phone doofus. C'mon network computers are soo last century, didn't you work on diskless workstations back in the stone age? How did that work out for you?" And I get that its not very sexy to propose the 21st century equivalent of the VT100 but that did not change the fact that the data says that people want these things.
So I keep hoping Google will/would step outside their complexes and build a laptop killer. And they are getting closer and closer. These machines are clearly an improvement over the first generation both in software and in hardware. I feel like they had an opportunity here to get out in front of Apple, but given the announcement I don't think they did.
For me, it makes June 11th (Apple's WWDC keynote) more interesting than it might otherwise have been.
I have no doubt that "network computers" are going to have a bit of renaissance soon. I just doubt that people will be in a rush to buy a $1000 version. People may like simpler computing experiences, but they won't buy just based on that. The iPad took off cause it is a sexy (and fairly cheap) product. The simplicity just enhanced the experience. High end Chromebooks would basically require the purchaser to value simplicity over everything. They would have to not buy cheaper computers that check off more features and can even run Chrome themselves. And I just think the amount of people who are aware of their limitations and will spend more than the average person to accommodate them is very small.
What is really cool is that we may see folks actually get this choice and then we can come back around and talk about it again.
A funny (and true) story: I got to intern at IBM in the late 70s. The Altair 8800 was getting a lot of press and Apple had just jumped in with the Apple II. I lusted after a Sol-80 at the time. Anyway, there was an on going discussion at IBM as to whether or not anyone would really pay what it would cost to make a "real" computer for individuals. So they built one, it ran a hacked up version of the software their other computers ran called TSO/MVS. It had a very serialized 370 architecture to cut down on complexity, and limited batch capability. It would have retailed for about $17,000 to make the kinds of margins IBM expected. (many of the parts got reused in the 5100 but that is different story)
It was a total failure of course, nobody wanted a computer for themselves, it was just a bunch of overly ambitious EE's over promising and under delivering by using calculator chips to make something that could run stored programs. IBM was not a calculator company, so that was a market they weren't going to enter. A complete renegade at IBM had a different view and built their vision in a widely derided project in Boca Raton FL (even then it wasn't much of a tech bastion). The resulting machine, the IBM PC, was a huge deal. And like the iPad it surprised its own maker at how many they sold.
I relate that story because I think we're on the cusp of one of those changes. My instincts tell me that this is one of those times when renegades have an advantage over the common knowledge. I call it out so that folks can watch it happen, or not. I'm really going to feel foolish next year if nothing has changed but I'm totally ok with that. At the moment it feels like Christmas Eve to me.
When I look at the market, and especially after the pretty remarkable success of the iPad, I see a clear line from smartphone, through smart tablet, to smart laptop. My expectation is that Apple will release an iOS based version of the Macbook Air for just this reason.
This is my reasoning for that expectation. The iPad has taken a chunk out of the laptop market. A number of folks who would have bought a laptop bought an iPad instead this year. The number one reason that folks give for not replacing their laptop with an iPad is that "they can't type on it." and carrying multiple elements around (bluetooth keyboard etc) is inconvenient.
When you get a device which has a high quality screen, and an attached keyboard, and can be used anywhere on 3G, you will capture a much bigger chunk of the laptop market.
Now granted, I've been working this since 1999 when I pitched the 'appliance' laptop to Venture funds (they declined to fund because they didn't feel anyone could ship a product against windows and succeed), and I pitched it to the Android team when I was at Google (and while I take no credit at all for ChromeOS it did a lot of the things I had proposed in my JaDE project, so they were on the same wavelength). When I did my VC pitch I had commissioned some surveys and found that a significant chunk of people who owned a computer didn't want the "compute" part, they wanted just the web browsing/emailing/document prep part. Further it bothered them that their computer had all this stuff that they never used, and was often a source of exploits by third parties.
So as I pushed inside Google for this the primary push back was "Ok, I got that already, its my phone doofus. C'mon network computers are soo last century, didn't you work on diskless workstations back in the stone age? How did that work out for you?" And I get that its not very sexy to propose the 21st century equivalent of the VT100 but that did not change the fact that the data says that people want these things.
So I keep hoping Google will/would step outside their complexes and build a laptop killer. And they are getting closer and closer. These machines are clearly an improvement over the first generation both in software and in hardware. I feel like they had an opportunity here to get out in front of Apple, but given the announcement I don't think they did.
For me, it makes June 11th (Apple's WWDC keynote) more interesting than it might otherwise have been.