Dell prepares notebook push

As its PC cash cow starts to die, Dell is stepping up its notebook marketing to make up the difference.

Dell executives in India think that there is still a huge market for notebooks even while the PC market dries up.
A Dell India executive Marketing director P Krishnakumar was quoted  as saying that notebooks were the biggest segment that is growing.

Dell hit the headlines recently by ruling out building smart phones and saying it was only interested in desktops, notebooks and tablets.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom which claims that mobile workers want smartphones and tablets. Dell thinks that they still want notebooks and will be looking at tablets as secondary devices.

Dell thinks that this is particularly true in the business-to-business space. Krishnakumar noted that the drop in notebook sales has mostly hit the consumer markets.

Krishnakumar is hoping that PC sales will grow in developing markets, where penetration is still low.

However it admits that it has not been able to squeeze much growth in this area.

For example, in many areas of India, PC penetration seven percent, though in urban areas it is 45 percent.

But developed countries have 98 percent penetration, and as a result the industry has not grown at all in the last few years, he said.

Dell launched a 14-inch Ultrabook Latitude, and the all-in-one Dell OptiPlex and tablets like the Latitude 10 and XPS 12 convertible which is a combination of laptop and tablet.

All the devices use the newly launched Windows 8 operating system although the B2B segment will have the option of using Windows 7.