The 500- Euro laptop has arrived in Europe. (Yes, you may laugh now if you’re a North American consumer)
Through golem.de we have just learned that the laptop/notebook price wars in Europe are continuing and the price has just broken through the 500 Euro ($650) barrier.
This means trouble for the consumer UMPC market in Europe as the price differential between like-for-like spec laptops and UMPC’s gets wider. In fact, the premium now stands at over 100%. Double the price!
The notebook in question is based on a Celeron-M at 1.3Ghz and the rest of the specs match or better those of the two Origami-based UMPC’s available. For Samsung especially, this is bad news as their marketing strategy seems much more consumer oriented. The Paceblade Easybook and Tablet Kiosk eo, the other UMPC’s on the market, are being sold through specialists to a narrower, more mobile-focused customer base and won’t be affected so much.
The strategy for Samsung could go any of the following ways.
- Introduce extra value to the Q1 by including accesories, software and content.
- Increase marketing and sales training activities
- Lower prices for the current Q1.
- Introduce a low-end base-model UMPC.
- Do nothing and pray for rich, mobile-aware customers.
Point 4 is particularly interesting because of the VIA-based $700 Samsung Q1 rumor.
If I was running Samsung Q1 marketing, i’d be thinking about adding a free docking-station and keyboard to the Q1 and then bringing in a low-end stripped down Q1 UMPC (no ethernet and vga-out ports) with a built in a digital TV module (as they do already in Korea) and inculude a digital TV contract. Sell for 400,- Euro plus 15,- Euro per month. Dare I suggest that they use a VIA chipset to enable hardware (low-power) MPEG2/4 decoding and tv-out port?
Steve / Chippy.
