David vs Goliath: Small PCs Worry Big PC Makers

According to the NY Times, the PC industry is going to sell tens of millions of “small PCs” that consume less energy, are fully internet-centric and are becoming more and more inexpensive every single day. This has the PC big-businesses very worried.

We’ve covered a few of the “mini-PCs” and “mini-desktops” on PC Authorities before and most analysts are agreeing that small “netbooks” like Asus and Everex have taken the industry by storm. However, the large companies (HP, Dell, Acer) aren’t going to let the little guys just play, according to the NY Times. “A Silicon Valley start-up called CherryPal says it will challenge the idea that big onboard power is required to allow basic computing functions in the Internet age. On Monday it plans to introduce a $300 desktop PC that is the size of a paperback and uses two watts of power compared with the 100 watts of some desktops,” they report.

Most of these “tiny PCs” will use “cloud computing” which is all the rage with Apple’s MobileMe and Windows’ Live. Cloud-computing allows the tiny PC to store media and other large user files on servers far away from the actual tiny machine.

Industry analysts report that these tiny PCs will threaten large giants such as Microsoft, Dell and even Intel because these “net-books” and “net-tops” no longer need to consume the large power that Microsoft and Intel have created as an industry standard. “When I talk to PC vendors, the No. 1 question I get is, how do I compete with these netbooks when what we really want to do is sell PCs that cost a lot more money?” said J. P. Gownder, an analyst with Forrester Research.

As usual with the PC industry, only time will tell if the little guy wins.