Noury Al-Khaledy (left), Intel General Manager for Nettop and Netbook Computing and Eric Li, Intel Product and Marketing Manager, show off the new motherboards for the new Intel nettops belonging to three form factor.

With the increasing demand for small form factor desktop computers, Intel has adopted a purpose-built approach in identifying significant market opportunities for nettop computers powered by the same Atom processor of those popular netbooks.

“Nettops based on our Atom processor are designed for easy computing and easy access to the internet,” says Noury Al-Khaledy, Intel General Manager for Nettop and Netbook Computing during the recently concluded APAC Nettop Media Workshop held in Bangkok, Thailand. “These are desktop PC’s for people who do a lot of word processing, email, voice over internet protocol or VoIP phone calls, view and share photos, watch videos, download and listen to music and play basic games.”

Al-Khaledy says that those who fall under this particular market category are the ones who will fully benefit from what the nettops have to offer, in addition to their affordable price tag and low power consumption. “If you’re the type of user who likes to do a lot of multitasking, use applications like Adobe Photoshop to edit your photos or Adobe Premiere Pro to create your own movies, compose your own songs and play a lot of 3D and MMORPG games, then your needs are better served by our Core 2 Quad-powered PC’s,” he adds.

With the purpose-built approach that places emphasis on the nettop’s strengths rather than its supposed limitations, both Al-Khaledy and Intel Product and Marketing Manager Eric Li have reported that Nettops have so far sold well in both what they call Mature and Emerging Markets in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. “APAC is a critically important geo with tremendous opportunities,” Al-Khaledy points out. “With the Atom platform, Intel is committed to helping foster growth by reaching new users and new markets.”

To reach these new markets, Li enumerates several ways in which their OEM and ecosystem partners can drive home the point that “affordability with the right performance” is what nettops bring to its target consumers. “This can be done through localized promos with partners, awareness programs, providing attractive financing, relevant and creative messaging and engaging new sales channels,” he declares.

As nettops continue to bridge the so-called digital divide and “drive affordable computing across the region," Li presented a snapshot of the APAC Nettop Market where Mature Markets comprise nearly two thirds of all Nettops sold in the region. Li’s presentation revealed India having the biggest total desktop market share at 33 percent followed by Korea at 23 percent and Taiwan at 11 percent. It’s a slightly different story for Nettops as Korea has the top market share at 39 percent share followed by Taiwan at 23 percent and then Thailand and Australia both at 11 percent. Li says the bulk of Nettops sold in APAC are in the US$200 to US$400 price range or from P9,000 to P18,000 in our exchange rate.

Back here at home and not at discussed in the APAC workshop are sales figure from the Philippines where the Nettop is being marketed by Intel Philippines and the Commission On Information, Communications and Technology (CICT) as the “Nettop Ng Bayan” which translates to “The People’s PC.”

In a subsequent statement, Jerome Matti, Marketing Marketing of Intel Philippines says that “the nettop market in the Philippines has grown 40 percent quarter-on-quarter and Nettop growth in our local market has in fact outpaced growth in Southeast Asia for the last two quarters.”

“Part of this uptake may be attributed to local programs such as the ‘Nettop ng Bayan,’ launched only last year in which affordable nettops are made available for Filipino users all over the country, in an effort to bridge the digital divide. The first Intel Atom-powered Nettop ng Bayan was launched only last July of this year.”

During the APAC workshop, several nettops belonging to three form factor categories identified by Intel as All-In-One, Mini-ITX and Custom Design were also on display and were available to the media for hands-on trial. Al-Khaledy says as good as they already are right now, nettops can only get better with the next generation Pine Trail-D Platform. “Pine Trail enables lower platform BOM, reduced power, fanless and quiet systems with its improved performance,” he beams. “It also supports several operating systems including the new Microsoft Windows 7 Starter and Home Basic editions, Windows Vista Basic edition, Windows XP Starter & Home edition and the open source Moblin v2 Linux system, which is optimized for our Intel Atom”