Don't Miss The Latest WTB Special Report

IT Security

Creating a firewall around your business

Information is an essential resource for all businesses today and is the key to growth and success. However, companies have to ensure that the information held on their IT systems is secure.

WTB Reports

Category Report - PCs - Laptops

Product Data

Category Report

Recommendations

01 December, 2008 16:35

Flexible working: why laptops dominate sales

by Robert Munro

As the downturn begins to bite, we are seeing increasing evidence of the commoditisation of technology as manufacturers seek revenue from tie-ins with service providers such as mobile telephony networks. A recent development in this area has been in the laptop or notebook market. Faced with falling sales, laptop manufacturers are now offering their products at heavy discount or even free to purchasers of mobile internet contracts.

Although such machines tend to be low on performance, they are more than adequate for web browsing, email, spreadsheets and word processing, the tasks demanded by most business users.

For example, Three is currently offering a free Dell Inspiron 1318 13.3" laptop worth £413 excluding VAT when you buy an 18 month mobile broadband package for £35 a month. Of course, once you start discounting in this way, you run the risk of damaging the perceived worth of your products and make it harder to sell high end versions.

While the majority of the laptop market is focused on low-cost basic machines, there is still a niche for fast, powerful computers with big screens. This segment is dominated by creative and media professionals who need to edit images or film on the go

For example, Apple encountered some resistance among consumers used to getting their handsets free when they introduced the contract iPhone in 2007 at a price in excess of £200. They relented to market forces this year by giving the device away with premium contracts although most will still have to pay a reduced purchase price.

Trends

Has the move to free machines damaged the laptop market? Far from it, fears of a recession have produced a strong upturn in the PC market, fuelled by the growth of low-cost, low power machines, used mainly for email, web-based and hosted applications.

That trend is bolstering what otherwise would be a rather moribund PC industry, according to industry analysts at Gartner. With a strong boost from a raft of mini-notebooks hitting the market, worldwide PC shipments reached 80.6 million units in the third quarter this year, marking a 15 per cent increase from the third quarter of 2007.

"The mini-notebook segment experienced strong growth in the global PC market, led by robust growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. In the North America market, the economic crunch created more interest in the sub-£350 segment. At the same time, the global PC market finally felt the impact from the global economic downturn. The US professional market experienced the biggest hit from the economic crunch," said Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa.

Enter the Netbook

Mini-laptops, increasingly known as netbooks, are relatively inexpensive, small-form-factor notebooks designed for basic applications, such as web surfing, emailing and word processing. They are designed to use less power than traditional PCs and laptops and are not robust enough for serious power users who are running graphics or other processor intensive applications.

Intel announced earlier this year that it was investing heavily in the new market.

In April, the chipmaker began supplying Atom processors for mobile internet devices, small, almost pocket-sized machines. Intel spokesman Chris Tulley said at the time that the company expected sales of netbook and ‘net-top' devices to outpace growth of traditional laptops and desktops.

Early in June, Acer joined the fray with the Aspire One netbook, which is designed to use Intel's Atom N270 chip. Acer's netbook runs either the Linpus Linux Lite operating system or Windows XP Home.

This move into the netbook market worked out well for Acer, according to Gartner's report. The analyst firm reported that both Acer and Asus "had a strong focus and acted quickly in the mini-notebook segment". Because of it, both PC makers saw strong third-quarter growth.

Gartner reported that Acer, which has scrambled into third place in the worldwide PC shipment market, saw 47.3 per cent year-on-year growth in the third quarter, compared with 8.1 per cent for fourth-place Lenovo, 15.1 per cent for market leader HP and 11.6 per cent for second-place Dell.

Buying advice

Screen coating
Reflective screen coatings are popular, since they make graphics and movies look more saturated. However, these screen coatings can be problematic in an office, where lighting and movement can create glare. If you plan mainly on office work, consider a notebook without a glossy coating or pay more for a backlit LED display. Some laptops offer a choice of display coating.

Storage
Laptops come with at least 120GB hard drives. Photo, music and video files take up a lot of space. Adding a larger hard drive when you configure a system is a worthwhile upgrade if you collect media files (music, photos or videos). You cannot add an additional internal hard drive to most laptops, so allowing room for growth can be a good investment. However, if the manufacturer gives you a choice of a bigger hard drive or a faster one (which we found is often the case), faster is better for most people. Internal solid-state storage is still too new to be affordable for most people.

Wireless connectivity
All laptops come with integrated WiFi. Some also come with an antenna for the Verizon and Sprint EVDO or Cingular's EDGE Wide Area LAN (WAN), which lets you connect to the internet anywhere in range of the provider's data network (mostly major cities). A variety of new wireless technologies is usually an option.

Warranty
Warranties range from one to three years. All manufacturers offer warranty upgrades, and prices can vary by model. Tech support is generally free during the warranty period, but not thereafter. Because all laptops are proprietary and have few user-replaceable parts, ExtremeTech and other experts recommend, "Get the best warranty you can afford. Unlike desktop computers, laptop PCs' parts cannot be swapped out if something fails." Manufacturers such as Dell and HP are adding extras such as theft insurance to warranty upgrades to make them more attractive.

Cloud computing

For many business users the need for high performance laptops is less pressing with the advent of web-based applications accessed via the internet.

These are housed on remote servers and Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users.

For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

This makes the need for sophisticated machines redundant while fuelling demand for fast and reliable connectivity options.

Latest models

The identification by manufacturers of a need for these low-end laptops has produced a range of smart little laptops this year.

The new range of netbooks are all full-featured notebooks with displays in the 7- to 10-inch range and all are easy to tote around. Nearly all offer several USB ports, a webcam, LED backlit screens, integrated speakers, WiFi and more, so there are very few differentiators.

At the higher end, Dell, HP and Apple have all introduced new laptops this year, mostly aimed a creative professionals with an eye for sartorial elegance combined with powerful computing abilities.

Style wars

One area in which notebook manufacturers have tried to ramp up demand for their products is the fashion stakes.

Apple started the trend in must-have machines with the use of colour, aluminium casing and the super-slim, ultra-desirable MacBook Air.

In a world where performance and function are very similar, design can be a deciding factor in buyers' minds.

If you think this is shallow, compare it to the fleet car market, where model choice is often part of a business strategy. What does a Fiesta say about you compared to a Mercedes, a bulky black business laptop to a sleek MacBook Air.

HP's strategy reflects a wider focus on design in the computer industry. Computers should be an "object of desire and possession," said HP PC chief Todd Bradley.

Bradley, who is responsible for HP's radical design programme famously described one laptop on the company's drawing boards as looking like a Russian truck. He told designers to go for form and function, not cost cuts.

"Not only did they have the permission to be creative and design beautiful products, it was a mandate. We made design a very visible priority," he said.

High-end laptops

While the majority of the laptop market is becoming focused on low-cost, basic machines, there is still a niche for fast, powerful computers with big screens.

Apple started the trend in must-have machines with the use of colour, aluminium casing and the super-slim, ultra-desirable MacBook Air

This segment is dominated by creative and media professionals who need to edit images or film on the go.

These machines have fast processors, graphics cards and at least 2GB of RAM. For those who value a large amount of screen real estate and who regularly use their laptops to present to clients, a 17-inch screen is worth considering.

The future of the laptop

There is no doubt that laptops will continue to drop in price, size and weight. There are widespread predictions of the sub-$100 (£65) machine aimed at developing countries. Indeed, the One Laptop per Child Programme (OLPCP) recently unveiled the prototype XO 2.0 which has two screens instead of a screen and keyboard. It can be configured to use as a traditional laptop with one screen or as a book style tablet. This makes it extremely versatile.

The distinction between phones, PDAs and laptops is likely to become blurred with many devices becoming essentially fully-featured computers with small screens. The Google G1 phone uses the Linux-based Android platform and is predicted, along with Apple's iPhone, to make a lot of businesses wonder if they really need a laptop at all.