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One of the key trends of 2010 will be the embedding of fast wireless in a widening range of devices, beyond smartphones and netbooks/notebooks. These will take on various form factors and will have an always-on wire-less connection, and many will seek to occupy the hybrid ground between PCs and phones. The iPad from Apple is just one of these.  
 
Four key characteristics will set the new breed of devices apart from phones and notebooks, though not all the devices will feature all four.

• An always-on, broadband wireless connection but with the carrier brand invisible. Users will typically not pay a separate data charge, and the cost of the 3G or 4G connection will be included in the price of the device, the service subscription or in content purchased.  
• The new devices will be heavily browser oriented and will often be geared to the emerging cloud applications and services, rather than relying mainly on downloads and preloaded apps.
• They will adopt a wider variety of form factors than we have seen on mobile networks to date, and some of these will be optimized for a single usage (eg ereaders) though there may be other functionality also.  
• In many cases, the device will also be optimized for a highly integrated content experience, whether this is an apps store or a media store like iTunes or Amazon Kindle.  

The ereader, particularly the Kindle, has blazed the trail for the wireless, non-phone gadget that supports a highly optimized content experience and an embedded 3G business model. While ereaders have allowed op-erators and content owners to experiment with the new approach, and are a growing segment in their own right, 2010 will start to see a broadening of the category. The total mobile internet device market will be very dif-fuse and some designs will be very experimental, but can be broadly di-vided into a few key categories – tablets, smartbooks, netbooks and the emerging cloudbooks.  
 
This report focuses on devices which fall between smartphones and PCs in size and function, and meet at least three of the four criteria above. In particular, it will cover:  

• ereaders and their cousins the new-style multimedia tablets;   
• smartbooks (somewhat netbook-like but smaller, with user in-terfaces closer to those of phones, and usually running Linux);  
• cloudbooks, running a browser as OS, such as Google Chrome OS, and mainly positioned as web thin clients.  

We have provided forecasts for how each of these nascent categories per-forms from 2009 to 2014; the vendors who will benefit (or miss out); the key technical enablers in hardware and software; the operator response; and the context of changing mobile behavior and usage, which will drive the demand for the new breed of gadgets.  
 
This report is priced at £1,250 ($1,925) for an individual copy and just £2,400 ($3,700) for a corporate license. Corporate licenses allow distribution to all employees of a corporation and use of the results and graphics in presentations and promotional materials.  
 
To order or request a more detail executive summary, email: peter@rethinkresearch.biz.