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While low-cost laptops have so far been the domain of companies such as Asus, the category has begun to attract the attention of larger players such as HP, which recently released its Mini Note, and Dell which is gearing up its own offering<

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However, Fujitsu appears sceptical of the benefits.

"We're sitting on the sidelines not because we're lazy," Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management for Fujitsu tells the New York Times. "We're sitting on the sidelines because even if this category takes off, and we get our piece of the pie, it doesn't add up. It's a product that essentially has no margin."

The claim echoes that of Sony which announced back in February that "If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," referring to the potential ability of the laptops to shift the market in an entirely new direction, in which the only consideration is cost.

The prediction is given some weight by Intel which expects the new category to be shipping around 40 million units a year by 2011.