Summary
Morvay reckons the Basic Ultra Portable category is tailor-made for telco bundles. “They are perfect product for the telco industry as they’re cheaper than full-priced notebooks for bundling with telco products,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see LG and maybe even Samsung produce a Basic Ultra Portable and use their position as handset vendors to capitalise on their telco industry relationships.”
So, in summary, the good news is that loads of notebooks are being sold but the bad news is that vendors are having to drop their pants to do so.
We asked Morvay how long this trend can continue. “Competition is incredibly intense, especially in Europe,” she said. “In Q2 the ASP for commercial notebooks declined by even more than consumer ones so it looks like businesses are just as price sensitive.”
"I wouldn’t be surprised to see LG and maybe even Samsung produce a Basic Ultra Portable"Any time there is intense competition the ultimate winner is the consumer. Q3 will see the sales of new entrants to the Basic Ultra Portable category measured for the first time, which will coincide with the competitive “back to school” period.
Given that these PCs were originally designed with children and students in mind we should see another healthy jump in sales volume and it will be interesting to see how ASPs hold up.
