Cellular Broadband Notebooks Boosted By Deals

Technology News offers more commentary on recent announcements by Dell, HP and Lenovo to offer laptops next year that can connect to Verizon's high-speed EV-DO network. Yankee Group analyst John Jackson said, "This should serve to catalyze the WiFi hot-spot aggregators," and "represented a significant boost to a different wireless option."

Jackson thought the deals present "a new set of hurdles for the market," referring to distribution and the necessary relationship between wireless operator and user. Still,they may mark the beginning of new mobile functionality in notebooks. "This brings a new value-added dimension to the notebook, and it brings it directly," he said.

Roger Entner at Ovum commented that the deals will make "Verizon's EV-DO much more accessible to users," and will elicit "incredibly more loyalty" for Verizon. Entner likened it to Intel's Wi-Fi strategy, an "if you build it, they will come" approach.