What do best selling notebook brands have in common (I mean besides healthy sales figures)? The answer is simple: they share a common trait-- they've spring from companies that have portable specific research,development and design projects.
The best example of this is the ThinkPad brand. For the last decade of the 20th Century I watched IBM fuel and compound the growth of ThinkPad by adding features that came from its R&D labs and design centers. Some of the products weren't so successful-- the Butterfly expanding keyboard on the ThinkPad 701, for example. But others propelled the brand into a name that not only had above average recognition, but which carried with an implied cachet of reliability, durability and innovation.
When IBM sold ThinkPad to Lenovo, i sincerely hoped that the vast body of ThinkPad R&D as well as related experimental design was part of the sale. Judging by the ThinkPad X- compact notebook brand, I think the R&D DNA it was transferred to Lenovo. My one big fear about Lenovo ThinkPad was that the brand would go bland, becoming yet just another notebook cranked out in Taiwan or the People's Republic that was based on a bland formula driven by spread sheet economics. If that happens, then ThinkPad will end up joining a list of products sold at membership department store and unloaded on west coast docks from high speed ocean freighters that make the Pacific crossing in seven days. And that's not good.
ThinkPad isn't the only brand that's benefited from great R&D that included design. HP's Ominbook family, Compaq's Presario portables (which initially set a high standard for audio playback quality) all are based on DNA from R&D and design projects.
Toshiba is also very high on my list. Toshiba's work bonding a user to their notebook by introducing keyboards that had the right pitch and throw "feel" is extremely noteworthy. Toshiba also has done a lot of work on display and power consumption technology.
I use to be dismissive of certain Toshiba brands like the Satellite family. Buying and living with one for a year beginning in late 2002 changed that. It's a great brand that is as reliable as it is durable. I only wish that it were smaller and lighter. If I weren't seriously contemplating a Lenovo ThinkPad X40 machine, Satellite could well be my next choice, even if it meant I had to use a Bluetooth dongle or card to give it all the features i want and require. Like IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba has a proven record or turning R&D based concepts into great portables. The Pentium II and III slice-expandable versions of the Portege were great examples of what R&D can do to help establish a brand and promote sales.
The most astounding thing about portable makers' R&D efforts is how unwilling most are to tout their efforts or come out and say that such and such a feature is based on "an intensive research and development program." Individually companies like Lenovo have done a good job with this. If you believe their claims (and I do since I know these people)a ThinkPad's hard disk drive is safe from most major g-force induced shock trauma catastrophes.
The sad thing about promoting R&D-based features in portables is that most external marketing communications personnel may not get what should be an important nuanced message.
In case they don't: here's an elevator pitch that should be burned into their desks or cubicles:
R&D is not based on quarterly trips to Taiwan in business class out of LAX or SFO. It's about refining existing or pioneering new technologies and incorporating those in your products to help establish a dominant market for a brand.
If you don't think that works: look at the growth and sustained presence of Lenovo, Toshiba and HP/CPQ.
Comments