Just a day later, a post at Ars Technica called hoax on the story posted by Arkansas IMC after contacting Cody PR representatives, who told them “this story, or any announcement regarding a netbook, was not (emphasis theirs) initiated, condoned, or approved by Coby Electronics.” A few days later came an official debunking by Coby, who said with absolute finality, “Coby Electronics Corporation is not currently producing a PC nor is one headed to market at any price under the company’s name.”

It is now January and netbook makers from all over the world are at CES 2009 in Las Vegas. And guess who is there? Yeah, Coby Electronics with a series of what appear to be discount netbooks. Engadget has the story along with some photos and information from a Coby rep.

In a variety of colours, Coby’s netbooks are lined up and the rep called them a “market research project”, before saying that the machines would price at “under $200″. The machines will be very bottom of the barrel, but if they do in fact make the market, the sub-$200 price tag should appeal to a lot of consumers looking for a cheap computer during the ongoing credit crunch.

What I’d be interested to know is if Arkansas IMC’s breaking story that they were panned so hard for WAS indeed of a hoax or if Coby’s new netbook line is completely unrelated.

And too good to be true it was. Just a day after the story broke, the doubts began, with PR representatives at Coby saying that the story was not “initiated, condoned, or approved by Coby Electronics.” While this didn’t decisively confirm the whole thing was a hoax, an official statement from the company posted by SlashGear does. The statement, particularly the following part of it, couldn’t be any clearer:

“Coby Electronics Corporation is not currently producing a PC nor is one headed to market at any price under the company’s name.”

The End.

The lengthy article presents a good argument for the claims being false, with the main comment to pay attention to being this: “Rubin contacted Coby Electronics himself, and was told by the company’s PR representatives that “this story, or any announcement regarding a netbook, was not (emphasis theirs) initiated, condoned, or approved by Coby Electronics.” The story itself was dismissed as erroneous.

Well, that isn’t promising for the plausibility of the whole story. And while the article doesn’t confirm that Cody won’t be releasing these discount netbooks, it presents a good argument that seems to render the idea unlikely. Hopefully we can get some confirmation one way or another soon.

Starting in early 2009, Coby will be rolling out $99.95 netbooks to Rite Aid Pharmacies and Kroger grocery stores. They are calling their “PoqetMate-7″ 7-inch and “PoqetMate-9″ 9-inch models “midget PCs”, but they seem to fit the definition of a netbook pretty well — maybe even better than some of the larger ones available on the market. We don’t know exactly how powerful these netbooks will be, but at that price, lets not expect anything too great. What seems to be definite though is that a Chinese-sourced Longsoon CPU with Linux will fuel them.