"智能本"问世 有望挑战"上网本"

随着一类更新颖电脑产品——智能本的推出，上网本在个人电脑市场上增长最快的地位今年将面临挑战。
The netbook faces a challenge this year as the highest growth category in the personal computer market by a younger upstart – the smartbook.

智能本产品本周将在拉斯维加斯消费电子展上首次正式亮相。芯片制造商飞思卡尔今天发布了该类型产品的基准设计，从而宣告了它们的问世。
Smartbooks will make their full debut this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The chip maker Freescale today heralded their arrival with the launch of its reference design for the category.

“智能本”的名称意味着智能手机和上网本的特征，结合在了一个更小的笔记本电脑上，相比上网本拥有重大优势。智能本的电池可持续一整天，通过3G手机网络而非WiFi热点始终与互联网连接，此外，该产品成本较低，运营商向订户免费提供的动力更大。
The name signifies the marrying of smartphones and netbooks in a smaller laptop that has key advantages over a netbook. Smartbooks feature all-day battery life, constant internet connectivity through the 3G phone network, rather than relying on WiFi hotspots, plus lower costs that will encourage operators to offer them free to subscribers.

智能本的出现可能会让占主导地位的硬件和软件厂商英特尔和微软陷入被动。微软目前没有可供新机器运行的操作系统，而在英特尔，虽然其Atom芯片迄今在上网本产品中占据主导地位，但它并不是智能本领域的竞争者。
The arrival of smartbooks could put Intel and Microsoft, the dominant hardware and software players, on the back foot. Microsoft is not providing an operating system to run on the new machines, while Intel, whose Atom processor has so far dominated the netbook category, is not a contender in smartbooks.

智能本将运行由英国ARM公司设计的微处理器，类似于大多数手机所使用的芯片。
Smartbooks will run instead on microprocessors based on designs by the UK's ARM, similar to those used in the majority of mobile phones.

该类产品正由飞思卡尔、恩威迪亚、迈威尔和高通等无线和图形芯片制造商推动，它们一直无法在上网本市场夺得显著份额。
The category is being promoted by wireless and graphics chipmakers such as Freescale, Nvidia, Marvell and Qualcomm, which have been unable to grab a significant share of the netbook market.
　　
上述公司进入该市场之时，个人电脑厂商正向它们请教智能手机方面的专业技术，因为个人电脑厂商发现，体积更小的机器更能吸引消费者。在消费者市场上，笔记本电脑的销售已经超过台式机，而上网本已成为笔记本电脑市场增长最快的一部分。
They are entering the fray as PC makers call on their smartphone expertise as they find that ever-smaller machines attract consumers. Notebook sales have overtaken those of desktop PCs in the consumer market and netbooks have become the fastest growing part of the notebook market.

“未来几年我们将看到这些新型设备出现爆炸式增长，这将改变个人电脑业的格局，”飞思卡尔首席市场营销官亨利·理查德说。第一款智能本产品——去年秋天夏普在日本推出的Netwalker——就采用了飞思卡尔的处理器。
“We're going to see an explosion in the next couple of years of these new type of devices and that's going to change the PC landscape,” says Henri Richard, chief sales and marketing officer at Freescale. Freescale's processor was in the first smartbook released – the Sharp Netwalker launched in Japan in the autumn.