The speculation is over. Computerword reports that Skytone, a Chinese firm that set off a blogger firestorm when it published specs for the first-ever Google Android-based netbook, expects to ship the Alpha 680 netbook within three months at a price of just $250.
That’s a far cry from the $100 price bandied about originally, but still well below the $300 to $500 price of today’s netbooks, which primarily run Windows XP on the Intel Atom processor. Based on the ARM11 chip, the netbook isn’t the most high-powered or high-featured. For example, battery life is nothing to write home about: just two to four hours while surfing the Web via Wi-Fi or 3G. Still it’s enough for Skytone’s target market, which is the 80% of the world–including villagers in Africa or farmers in China–who can’t afford today’s current crop of PCs. As Skytone cofounder Nixon Wu says:
“Watching TV over the Internet is not the most urgent thing for them.”
Wu also said he hopes that the more Android netbooks he–and other vendors–sell, the more the price will come down, eventually to the $100 range. And that’s a price point that could very well leave Microsoft out of the netbook running, even with its stunted Windows 7 Starter initiative.
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