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Samsung Rejoining U.S. Laptop Market With Lightweight Notebooks

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 October 2008, 12:10 CDT

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd announced it would be re-entering the U.S. computer market with a range of branded products that build on its component supply strengths.

On Tuesday, the Korean-based company is set to unveil new ultralight notebooks designed to appeal to potential buyers of Apple Inc's groundbreaking MacBook Air and smaller "netbook" models from the likes of Asustek Computer.

The Korean electronics maker sees other Asian brand-name players in the crowded U.S. market as vulnerable, especially Toshiba Corp, Sony Corp and Lenovo.

Samsung executive said the company is also coming out with models aimed at business professionals and the market for bulkier laptops known as "desktop replacements".

Samsung's X-Series premium lightweight notebooks, like Apple's Air, come with options for either a hard drive or solid-state memory. But Samsung's X360 is priced at $2,499 and carries 128 gigabytes of flash memory, twice the 64 gigabytes that comes with the Apple Air selling for $2,598.

"This is the MacBook Air killer,” said Bret Berg, the senior product manager for Samsung's U.S. computer division. “These products really go after Apple and Sony.”

Weighing only 2.8 pounds, the X360 has an ultra-thin, tapered wedge design with a magnesium allow chassis, an aluminum top and a "pebble"-style keyboard.

The X460, Samsung's hard-drive version, starts at $1,899 for a 160-gigabyte hard drive, twice the capacity of Apple's existing MacBook Air model that is priced at $1,799 for an 80-gigabyte drive. The X460 weighs less than 4.2 pounds.

Its premium netbook, the NC10, in white or metallic-blue colored cases, starts at $499 with a 10.2-inch display and 160 gigabyte hard drive. Netbooks are a smaller class of PCs that are lower priced than notebooks and can sell for $300 or less.

The Samsung notebooks are being positioned between lower cost EEE PCs from Asustek and the smallest full-scale notebooks. Samsung's model bears a resemblance to an 11-inch notebook Sony sold earlier this decade that was popular with mobile business professionals but cost upward of $2,000 at that time.

Many of the components inside Samsung machines are made by its semiconductor and other finished product businesses, creating a nice cost advantage. This includes Samsung's SuperBrite light-emitting diode, backlit liquid crystal displays.

Samsung estimates that 80 percent of the value of its PCs is from Samsung components -- everything but the microprocessor and graphics chips. As the world's biggest maker of memory chips, storage is Samsung's biggest weapon.

Samsung’s strong established ties will also aid the reentry into the highly competitive American computer market with business resellers, distributors and consumer retailers through sales of everything from TVs to monitors to phones.

The company plans to rev up its sales distribution strategy in the first quarter of 2009, including corporate distributors such as CDW or Newegg and consumer retailers such as Best Buy, and regional U.S. store chains Fry's Electronics or The Wiz.

Samsung's nearly month long announcement coincides with Apple's announcement later on Tuesday of upgraded notebook models. Analysts predict Apple may introduce a new line of notebooks for under $1,000.

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On the Net:

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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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