motorollin wrote:
My guess is that people will show initial interest due to the low price tag, but will lose interest when they realise they can't run their existing Windows software on it.
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moto
I doubt that completely.
If Google intends to market a "GoogleCube" that offers you the ability to surf, download music, media, etc., do email, use other business apps like a wordprocessor etc., it will sell like hotcakes -- especially if it's $200-$300 each.
The average grandpa and grandma couldn't care less about running windows apps and games. They want online access, easily, and cheaply and they want to be able to print their photos they took with their new digital camera their kids gave them for Christmas, they want to be able to view and print photos of their grandkids they've been sent by relatives, they want to shop online, pay bills online, check online to see what movies are playing, etc..
That's not a small market segment either -- that's about 75 million people in North America alone.
If these things start showing up in all the primary retail channels they will sell millions of them. (We had something like this when I worked at AST, except the price to performance ratio back then wasn't good enough to hit a $250 niche.) But these days you can buy brand new AMD chips and micro motherboards for $75 total if you're buying quantity. You can get micro cases for $5 each if you buy 25,000 or more of them, you can bundle applications (yes linux ones if this is a linux based box) for $1-$2 per unit. I can't see how Google won't make a load of money from this.
The best part? They are intentionally shoving it in the face of Microsoft by not including a MS OS -- and can you blame them? Microsoft's Steve Ballmer claimed they were
going to "crush Google" last year. :-)
