"Today we have iPhones, smartphones, mobile internet devices, netbooks, notebooks, and more," Calder said. "We're not sure how adding another new term helps, and, in fact, it may only confuse consumers."

Richard Shim, a PC market analyst with IDC Corp., isn't enchanted with the "smartbook" either.

"It's not very intuitive to me, I don't know what it is," Shim said. "I think it's going to be a challenge and will require some heavy marketing to get people to accept it."

Shim admits he's grown a bit jaded after seeing all of the variants on the basic subnotebook PC that vendors tried unsuccessfully for years to hype until Asus finally struck gold with the Eee netbook in late 2007.

"To be honest, there's been a lot of terms that have been thrown around. Nothing's stuck, so the vendors tweak the terms, tweak the models, and hope they find something that resonates," Shim said.