There’s been a lot of speculation recently about the possibility of Apple entering the netbook market. Almost every major laptop maker has released or announced one. A bunch of companies that you wouldn’t normally think of as laptop makers have too. And hackers have managed to unofficially install OS X on many existing netbooks. So what’s keeping Apple?
In a quarterly earnings call, Steve Jobs today said that Apple is taking a “wait and see” approach to the netbook market. We’ve heard this line before. But there two new things came out of this call:
- Jobs considers the iPhone to be Apple’s existing entry into this space.
- Apple “has some pretty interesting ideas” for the netbook space if the market does evolve.
Now, I’m not sure what it will take before Jobs considers the market to be “evolved” enough for Apple to launch a netbook. Asus alone has already sold 4 million Eee PCs this year. Sure, Apple has sold 6.9 million iPhones, but 4 million ain’t a number to sneeze at.
