Vendors lower laptop prices to fuel growth

For many of us, our laptop is the most valuable tool we use especially for those road warriors traveling hotel to hotel delivering one multimedia presentation after another. For now this tool is getting cheaper and cheaper and the price differential between a PC and a laptop is coming down. Different vendors have adopted a strategy to slash down the price range for laptops, propelling the growth in the process.

Allied Computers International (ACi), a notebook company with its Indian base at Mumbai, is all set to tap the education segment with its low-priced notebooks for students. The company has already bagged an order for providing notebooks to Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Management. "Initially we are going to provide 1,000 notebooks to the institute and this figure will go upto 4,500 as we move forward. We have already started the implementation of this project. We are also providing financial assistance to students for these notebooks with the help of various financial institutions," revealed Ashok Kaul, GM,
ACi.

This move of the company can be seen as a way to entrench itself firmly in the Indian marketplace and also to increase the laptop adoption among the students community. The company is providing its 2.8 kg notebook with P4 processor, pre-loaded Linux operating system, 20 GB hard disk, 14 inch TFT, RAM that can be upgraded to 1 GB.

Explained Kaul, "We have devised a plan in which notebooks will be made available for a price as low as Rs 35,000 exclusively for the student community in India." According to him, laptop market is growing at an accelerated growth rate of 25 to 30 percent while the PC market is moving up at 16 to 20 percent rate. "So the price differential between PCs and laptops is coming down day by day and this is increasing the marketshare of laptops."

ACi recently launched a range of notebooks under the name Ethos and Emerald, priced from Rs 55,000 to Rs 1 lakh. For corporates, it has come out with a branding program called Corporate Imaging, in which corporate customers would be provided laptops with customized images like logos and company names embossed on the front panel of laptops.

In a similar move Ingram Micro along with chipmaker Intel has already introduced laptops at an attractive price of around Rs 69,999, which is quite cheap when compared to earlier price range of more than Rs 1 lakh. The company is not stopping here and is slated to unveil the latest Intel Centrino processors enabling wireless connectivity within the sub-continent shortly.

Technology advancements such as DVD and videoconferencing are migrating from the desktop to the notebook, making mobile productivity tools even more attractive for businesses of all sizes. These advancements combined with continuing changes in work habits, a growing force of mobile workers and an increasing demand for worker mobility, will create just the right mix for this market segment to take off in the right direction.

Notebooks with DVD capabilities will become increasingly popular as more applications migrate to the medium. DVD-ROM will appeal to corporates that create sophisticated multimedia presentations, company profiles and demos. Many pharmaceutical companies already have multimedia presentation CD-ROMs for their sales force, and they'll want to upgrade their presentations to high-end MPEG using full-screen video and all the bells and whistles.

DVD for mobile computers promises to be popular among the service and support community as it delivers portability for large files, such as technical reference manuals and service procedures--companies can consolidate video, animation, sound and narration on a single DVD-ROM. And, with an increasing demand for integrated communications, business capabilities in their notebooks.

According to the market researcher IDC, within India a total of 15,879 notebooks were sold in Q1 2003 as against 12,803 units in Q3 2002, registering a leap of 24 percent. More than 60 percent of the total notebooks sold in JFM 2003 were shipped through the channels, the rest being direct shipments.

Interestingly, the unit shipment of notebooks in 2002 grew 25.3 percent over 2001, while the corresponding growth for desktops was 6.1 percent. IDC expects the Indian notebook market in 2003 to grow at approximately 35 percent over 2002.

Zia Askari