As we wait for UMPC announcements from Microsoft and others at CES, I started wondering about the health of the UMPC market. The critics have tended to be pretty harsh but vendors keep pushing out models. Samsung has 4, TabletKiosk should have 3 after CES. Nobody wants to report sales numbers except the anecdotal report that Asus had moved 40,000 units by focusing on the auto market.
The ultimate decision maker is the market. So what does the market say about these devices? A quick ebay check of open auctions (I was too cheap to spend the cash to review closed auctions) reveals that there aren’t that many devices for sale out there, a few Q1’s a couple of Asus and a couple of EO units. Yet still one could argue that not that many were sold, so few would be available for resale. Yet, we know that Best Buy sold out fast early on, the Asus has been hard to get, and Woot moved a couple hundred refurbished Q1’s, selling one every 4 minutes. So the items are in the marketplace but staying put with their owners, a good sign. Even more telling, the prices aren’t suffering much on the resale side. Q1’s are still getting close to $900 (albeit with some extras and upgrades that don’t come free with a new unit). Asus units as well are over $800 with a day still left in the auction and we all know how auctions can jump at the last minute.
So the current crop of UMPC’s aren’t devaluing too badly on the resale market. We haven’t really seen any new units that meet the Origami spec since the Asus but we suspect that vendors are waiting for CES. What’s telling is number of non-UMPC units that WANT to be UMPC’s. The OQO, Flybook, Fujitsu P1610 and Sony UX all come close enough to the specs to be real alternatives to an Origami UMPC and very useful machines but some others like the HTC Athena and S-Xgen aren’t really PC’s at all. They’re more like steroidal PDA’s but they want the UMPC moniker. Nobody wants to be a PDA any more.
There are a few basics branding plateaus in business.
1) If people tattoo your brand on their body, you have reach the pinnacle of branding (think Harley or Disney)
2) If your brand becomes a common verb, you’re a monster hit and worth a few billion. (FedEx, Xerox and much to their dismay, Google. Sling may be on it’s way here too.)
3) If people are knocking off your product or using similar product names, you’ve got a big hit. (iPod, Blackberry, Louis Vuitton, Rolex)
No one brand of UMPC has reach the number 3 level yet but the UMPC category as whole has. That’s good for the health of the market and an indicator that things are headed in the right direction. I think this CES and Vista are important milestones for the UMPC platform. Remember, this platform is less than a year old. The first real units when on sale in May of 2006. Vista and CES promise to give UMPC’s a shot in the arm, but overall UMPC health looks pretty good.
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