A well known market research firm, ABI research, has predicted that media tablets are going to account for three quarters of all the ultra-mobile by shipments made in this year. They also noted potentially long-term trends in which networks lose ground to tablet sales over the next few years. "Netbook value will shift from highly competitive computing and mobile broadband markets, including the U.S., to countries where low computing and home broadband penetration offers the greatest potential for mobile computing," the firm said in a report on this data.

While this research is far from condemning, your netbook certainly won’t be obsolete anytime in the next few years, it does show an interesting trend in how users perceive mobile technologies. Analysts were quick to point out that no single ultra-mobile device type has been able to maintain the lead for longer than a span of 36 months consecutively in any area of the world. This is good news for notebook fans, and makers, since it means that the tides could change in little more than a year.

Of course, one cannot look at this type of research without wondering what exactly ABI research considers to be an ultra-mobile device. After all, if hand-held videogame consoles are included in the running you not only end up with a much broader audience but a considerably younger one as well.

As it turns out the company only considers the following devices as part of the ultra-mobile device category: ultra-mobile PCs, mobile Internet devices, netbooks, and media tablets, so the audience does skew a little older and a little more trended towards business as much as play. Whether that makes these results more or less relevant when compared to overall spending patterns is a discussion for another day it’s just good to know what data is being compared to.

At an event for the folks at the Dreamforce conference Google's CEO let slip the release date of the newest version of the operating system, which has been named Ice Cream Sandwich.  Schmidt said, "We have a new operating system, internally known as Ice Cream Sandwich for some reason, which is being released in October, November."

Currently, there are not exacts on the release date for Ice Cream Sandwich, but this announcement does confirm the previous speculation about the release date that was based on the tentative release date of Verizon's Droid Prime, the first Android 4.0 smartphone.

For the time being, the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android will probably be restricted to smart phones, but like most of the other Android OS's the phones are usually just a front runner in the OS cycle. The phones get it first, shake out the bugs and then this version of Android will make its way to the tablets and the netbooks of the world. So, if you are in search of Ice Cream Sandwich on a netbook you will have to wait a little but longer than the phone users, but you will get a OS that works well. Not a bad trade off in the end.

Worried about how this might effect your current (or previous) versions of Android? Recent fragmentation data shows that many of the older versions are still in use, so you should not end up without support. After all half of all the users out there are still running on version 2.2 right now.

The processors, which were initially expected to be released at some point in September have been given a two month push back and will now be released at some point in November. While the wait may be annoying for some users the delay is for a good reason. Well, actually, it is for two good reasons.

The first is the a graphics drivers problem that at this point in time the company has not released any details on and the second is a lack of Windows 7 certification. Though there are a certain group of developers and mobile computer makers who would not care about the Windows certification, those for example who may want to use Android or proprietary operating systems to power their machines.

Of course, if you are in search of a netbook with a less powerful processor, many of which can make a variety of end users happy for years, then this delay could be good news for you. It will give you some more time to consider your options and do some research (our netbook comparisons page would be a good place to begin) and then you can still get your model while it is top of the line and you get to brag. Or, you can wait it out for the new processors and see if the prices on the current models drop when they are no longer the hottest ticket.

I've included video from Nvidia after the break that shows a great side by side comparison of a standard netbook graphical output when compared to a netbook powered by Nvidia ION 2

I also did a video of Nvidia ION with Adobe Flash 10.1 vs Nvidia ION with Adobe Flash 10.0 a while ago which showed similar and equally impressive results. I'm most excited by the fact that we're finally getting a 10 inch netbook that uses Nvidia ION in the new Acer Aspire One 532G though. What about you?

Via

If you are currently using a nettop as a multimedia center in your living room I'd love to hear your feedback. Also, Mike over at Netbook Live details the best nettop for the money.

Specs: Atom N330 processor, 2GB RAM (DDR2 800) (4GB Max), 160GB HDD (5400RPM), NVidia ION graphics, Gigabit LAN, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
Ports: 6x USB, HDMI, VGA, Card Reader, audio jacks, optical S/PDIF, 1x eSATA.

It's currently on sale at Amazon.com

via Gizmodo