Dethroned Toshiba keen to snatch back top position

By PETER GRIFFIN

Toshiba is vowing to retake its position at the top of the New Zealand notebook market this year, claiming a flood of cheap Hewlett Packard notebooks on to the market after the Hewlett Packard-Compaq merger saw its rival grab a larger slice of the market.

Ralph Stadus, general manager of Toshiba's information systems division for Australia and New Zealand, said Hewlett Packard had sold a large number of low-value notebooks as it merged the supply chains of the two PC makers and attempted to clear excess stock.

"They won a lot of market share at low price points, which isn't profitable for them or the channel.

"They're dumping end-of-model Machines in the New Zealand market."

Stadus said the impact had not been as great in the Australian notebook market, where Toshiba held on to its number one spot.

But Hewlett Packard market development manager Simon Molloy said the average selling price for HP notebooks had remained steady over the past year.

"While the market for entry-level notebooks is growing, we are still seeing a high volume of higher-spec products. For example, approximately 40 per cent of units shipped include a DVD/CD-writer combo drive," he said.

According to research group IDC, Hewlett Packard's market share was up 5.6 points. It took 32.5 per cent of the market in 2002, largely at the expense of Toshiba, which dropped 4 points to claim 27 per cent overall.

As they jostle for position in the fast-growing notebook market, the PC vendors are looking to growing interest in wireless networking to fuel sales.

Tomorrow, Intel unveils its Centrino architecture - a new processor, chipset and "wi-fi" 802.11 wireless card combination on which notebook vendors such as Toshiba will base their new models from this month.

Intel will even vet wireless hotspot operators to ensure their systems are compatible with Centrino.

Speaking at the MobileXchange conference in Melbourne last week, Intel's director of product marketing for Asia Pacific, Chak Wong, said the low-voltage processor increased battery life substantially from around one and a half hours on average to around five hours.

"It means you won't have to go and find a plug after two hours to charge your battery. It's been designed from the ground up and is different to the Pentium 4 architecture."

Cisco New Zealand's country manager, Tim Hemingway, said the wireless networking company would gradually move out of selling wireless network cards as computers were increasingly shipped with the cards pre-installed.

"We anticipated that this would come about. We'll focus on providing infrastructure in the future."

Stadus said Toshiba's version of the Tablet PC, a notebook with a reversible screen that can be tapped on with a stylus, was not a significant contributor to revenue despite Inform group estimating Toshiba had taken 88 per cent of Australian tablet sales out of the reseller channel.

"It's the first real change in user interface since the mouse was introduced. In a decade's time you won't be without it," he said.

Toshiba sold 18,000 notebooks in Australia and New Zealand in January, boosted by the delivery of a sizeable order for the Ministry of Education.

*Peter Griffin attended MobileXchange as a guest of Toshiba.