Christmas laptop push via mobile

September 15, 2008

Laptop manufacturers tip Christmas sales to be "crazy"

Laptop manufacturers are putting massive emphasis on the mobile sales channel to boost sales of notebooks this Christmas.

LG mobile has also announced its first foray into notebooks with the Netbook X110, released via its mobile arm rather than its electronics segment.

LG will release two versions of the X110, which has 1GB of RAM and an 80GB storage capacity. It will be available exclusively via Phones 4U until the end of the year, before it is available through conventional PC channels.

“Laptops are going to be big this Christmas,” said LG Mobile UK sales and marketing director John Barton. “Hopefully this will be the first of many for us, but we wanted to walk before we even trotted.

“We know people want to be able to access the internet in its entirety, wherever they are. Now we’re allowing them to do just that from a feature-rich device with all the styling people have come to expect from LG.”

Laptop manufacturer Asus has included notebooks in its product line for the first time this year and expects to shift 400,000 units in the three months to Christmas.

“The [mobile broadband] deals have created a gap in the market – 96 per cent of the people who buy these deals have at least one PC or laptop and buy this one as a second,” said an Asus spokeswoman.

HP head of telco channel Graeme Badenoch: “It’s a very important part of the market for us.

“The bundling of PCs with broadband is definitely here to stay and embedded SIM cards are going to significantly increase from now.”

Elonex said its ‘One’ laptop, launched in February, said sales via its exclusive retail partner Carphone had gone “crazy”.

“So many companies have now joined the game,” said an Elonex spokesman. “Sales are going really crazy.”

Vodafone and 3 are thought to be releasing their own branded and ‘SIM-loaded’ devices into the market to take advantage of demand.