Price Doesn’t Matter

Maybe it’s a battle for the top slot in India’s tiny notebook market, but

IBM prefers to call it ‘technology innovation’. The recent launch of the two

notebook ranges, ThinkPad R50 and T41, by IBM India, brings three leading global

players, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco, together on a platform, perhaps for the

first time, to support an end-user product or technology.

IBM’s Active Protection System aims at preventing hard drive crashes and

data loss. The new security feature incorporated in the operating system by

Microsoft will also ensure that users don’t lose critical data despite hard

disk failures. Different models include the Centrino mobile platform, with

built-in wireless capability, and P4 HyperThreading. The wireless models will be

compatible with Cisco wireless access points, IBM adds (a little unnecessarily,

as they should be compatible with most wireless access points, including D-Link

and others).

IBM will of course push its newer notebooks hard in segments that matter most–including

large educational institutes, and corporates, where anyway it has the big share.

That’s a given, but will such high-end models add to the numbers, to help IBM

company regain the #1 position in India back from HP/Compaq? Ask IBM India’s

personal computing division V-P Alok Ohrie and he will say that the company is

not into the numbers game. "It doesn’t matter much where we are and where

we will be. The important thing for us is to update our products with new

technologies."

According to IDC, IBM is at second position with 28% market share. HP has 31%

of the Indian notebook market. By not getting into the Rs 50,000-category

notebook, IBM has also conveyed that it will prefer to remain at the Rs 1-2 lakh

level, the corporate midrange and upward. Its strategy finds support from some

analysts who suggest that in a country like India where notebook penetration is

2% of PC penetration, it’s a better idea to target the niche segment.

Rahul Gupta in Mumbai