Notebooks: The Bull Run
Here comes the best part of the PC business-Notebooks. Notebooks recorded a spectacular growth of 168% during FY 2005-06. No longer it is a high value low volumes game, as one saw a deluge of offerings from vendors catering to the low- and high-end segments. With the escalation of the affordability factor, one also saw the lines between a desktop and a notebook get blur. For instance, a medium end desktop vended at Rs 25K in comparison to a low-end Celeron or Sempron based notebook retailed at Rs 33K. Looking at the impressive growth, the low-end notebooks escalated up the popularity charts, with students, educational institutions and SMBs taking advantage of affordable price points, and buying notebooks instead of desktops.

The leading trends in the desktop space was a burgeoning home market and a narrowing price difference between branded and non-branded PCs

JFM 06 witnessed a key development in the notebook space, with Intel launching its Centrino Duo processors called Core Duo. This development created a lot of excitement in the notebook space, as it led to the 'performance per watt' game. When Intel launched Centrino, it ushered in a new premise in mobile computing, similarly Core Duo is expected to create new performance benchmarks. AMD, which started the 64-bit market movement in the systems space has been waging a battle with Intel in the notebook space. AMD came out with its Turion 64 processors and players such as HP started shipping Turion 64 based notebooks in the sub Rs 45K price range. Then Intel launched its Core Duo in  Q1 06, and the battle for 'performance per watt' began.

Fiscal 2005-06 is the year of mobility. Notebooks right across all buying segments shipped with wireless functionality and consumers saw the best deals coming their way. A fully functional Centrino notebook hit the sub Rs 45K and Core Duo based machines vended at Rs 49K and above. A look at the fiscal revealed the overall 64-bit mood among the processor vendors. And yet again, AMD has taken the lead in announcing 64-bit dual core Turion processors designed for thin and light notebook PCs. With the impending launch of Microsoft's Vista early next year, vendors such as AMD are pitching hard that the future of computing revolves around 64-bit.

Intel also pitched on 64-bit, but during the launch of its Core Duo processor one saw a guarded optimism from Intel supporters. Critics aver that right now there are not enough 64-bit apps and hence, 64-bit notebooks are not really needed at this point of time. But opinions were divided here with strong statements both for and against doing the rounds during 2005-06.

A look at the traction vendors in fray had over the year put HP at the pole position. HP had a spectacular year with notebook volumes shipments growing by 207%. HP took on a highly segmented approach and classified its notebooks on distinct buyer segments. For instance, its business notebooks products are spread across three categories-balanced mobility, high performance, and ultra-light. It offered a slew of machines across configurations and price bands and customers across various segments from SMB to high-end corporate-they found a HP machine fitting their bill. On the home segment, HP positioned its notebooks as a connectivity and entertainment system. Its Pavilion range caters the HP home notebook offerings, while the business range comes under the HP Compaq brand name.  An extremely focused and 'a go to market strategy' and its indepth understanding of the buyer segments, has made HP an undisputed king in the notebook space.

Battling HP on the Indian turf was Lenovo, the closest competitor that can match HP in size and scale. The company over the year effectively absorbed IBM product folios and created brand identities on the ThinkPad and its own brand. Lenovo was able to double up its notebook shipments.

Dell breached the price performance barrier by launching Intel Core Duo based Inspiron notebooks and attractively priced between Rs 47K to Rs 66K with XP Home edition. This was indeed a very tempting deal in the notebook space.

Meanwhile Toshiba notebooks continued to do well, bagging orders from a number of corporate customers. A number of new models such as Quosmio were launched recently. A unique blend of entertainment and IT, the model works as a 17-inch TV and a DVD recorder, PC and music system and targets high-end segments. Toshiba also rolled out other models such as Portege R 200, a 1.1 kg model and a range of products in the Satellite series.  

LG also ended the fiscal with a bang with huge growth as compared to last year. LG which has its 'X' `note range of notebooks attacked the market with a slew of offerings from low end Celeron machines to high end Centrino offerings. The company introduced several value adds in its notebooks like 5.1 Dolby surround sound and larger viewing angle through a technology called In-Plane switching that improved the viewing angle by 36% as compared to conventional notebook screen. LG also pitched on bigger battery life by using a technology called “battery miser' that enabled notebook batteries to last up to seven hours.

Let's look at some of the Indian vendors in the fray. Zenith, during the last fiscal launched a slew of notebooks. Since the last two years, the company underwent an impressive shift from being a predominantly desktop company to a one offering a whole lot of IT hardware. With low-end to ultra portables, Zenith posted an impressive 270% growth in notebooks during 2004-06 in unit terms. Meanwhile, for HCL it has been an eventful year. It launched its laptops and christened it 'HCL Leaptops'-a range of laptops, each with features to particularly suit the requirements of specific customer segments, with prices starting from Rs 27K. Other vendors such as PCS, and Sony also had a good growth year.

Outlook
In the ongoing year, desktops are expected to notch up an overall growth of 25% to 28% for FY 2006-07. Meanwhile, in the last two years, the notebooks shipments volumes have grown at amazing rates, and this escalation will continue. Moreover, vendors have tied up with financial institutions and are offering attractive EMI options for notebooks that will further lead to more volumes. On the technology side of things, one will see AMD positioning its 64-bit dual core processors very aggressively. Intel Celeron M will continue to gain traction at the entry-level notebook offering, while the mid-to-high segments will be Core Duo, Centrino and AMD's 64-bit processors. On the desktop side, machines with Media Center editions will see good volumes, as home users will increasingly look at the entertainment value of the desktops they are buying. The outlook for the PC industry remains bullish.

Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in

Page(s)   1  2