New, Fragile, Less Powerful Netbook from Apple for More Cash?

Rumors are once again swirling that Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) is planning to build a netbook but one Apple reseller thinks the computer maker’s plans will be a lot less conventional than simply following the herd of vendors now making cheap, lightweight notebook PCs.

Sources have reportedly told several Taiwan-based media outlets that Wintek, a maker of small and midsize computer displays, and Quanta, the builder of Apple’s MacBook and iMac computers, are working with Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple on a 10-inch netbook with a touch-screen display that could be released in the second half of this year.

Wintek and Quanta are both headquartered in Taiwan.

Apple’s public attitude towards netbooks, small form-factor notebooks that are generally priced at under $500, can charitably be described as hostile. “We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs told financial analysts last October. Tim Cook, acting head of the company while Jobs is on medical leave, reiterated that message in January.

On the other hand, netbooks as a category are experiencing runaway success even as demand for just about every other PC product category has shriveled up in the current recession. Oh was hesitant to guess that Apple could be on the brink of making a purely economic decision to build a netbook, but conceded that many companies are changing things up these days.

Oh said details about a touch-screen that appear in published reports about an Apple netbook could signify that whatever this new product might be, it’s probably not a conventional netbook. He thinks Apple’s “netbook” play, if it can be called that, is more likely to resemble an outsized iPhone or iPod Touch, possibly incorporating a separate Bluetooth keyboard rather than a clamshell design.

Personally I think that this is going to be a huge fail and have worse response than the MacBook Air. But you never know, small minds are amused by small things…

(The Picture seen to the the above left corner is not the actual product design but a creation of what it may look like.)