Firm Cuts Prices on Many of Its Products : IBM Unveils Lap-Top Personal Computer
International Business Machines unveiled its much-anticipated lap-top personal computer Wednesday, along with upgraded versions of its Personal Computer AT and XT models. The company also announced price cuts ranging from 5% to 25% on many of its PC products.
The lap-top computer, called the PC Convertible, is a briefcase-size machine with a flip-up screen that weighs less than 13 pounds.
In conjunction with the introduction of the lap-top, which will be on store shelves sometime next month, IBM said it was discontinuing production of its Portable PC, a poor-selling, heavy portable machine that foundered even more amid months of speculation about the lap-top.
Industry analysts have been expecting that IBM’s lap-top entry will invigorate the sluggish market for lightweight portables. Infocorp, a market research firm in Cupertino, Calif., predicts that sales of all portables will increase to $2.5 billion this year from $887 million in 1985. But the projection was “predicated on an IBM announcement,” Infocorp President Richard Matlack said.
Analysts said IBM was likely to sell between 75,000 and 100,000 of the machines this year and possibly attract buyers to competitors’ machines as well. Last year, according to the market research firm Dataquest, about 400,000 lap-tops were sold.
As for the announced price cuts and performance improvements on its PC ATs and XTs, analysts said the moves reflect increasing pressure from rivals’ compatible machines that have outperformed IBM machines at lower cost.
“It’s like a six-day bicycle race,” said Michael Geran, who follows IBM for E. F. Hutton in New York. “One day, one person is ahead, and the next day, somebody else. This is IBM’s lap, but stay tuned.”
The new IBM lap-top machine has an internal memory of 256 kilobytes, or about 125 typewritten pages, and two 3 1/2-inch diskette drives. Though smaller than the currently standard 5-inch diskettes, the 3 1/2-inch diskettes can store twice as much information; each has a capacity of 720 kilobytes, for a total storage capacity of about 700 typewritten pages. For use as a desk-top machine, the PC Convertible’s flip screen can be detached and the computer can be connected to standard monitors.
“The best thing is the way they positioned this--they did not position this just as a portable but as a convertible desk-top,” Matlack said. That will attract users who want to take their work, and their computers, home with them.
Although analysts praised the engineering and packaging of IBM’s new machine, some said that the $1,995 price was too high and that it would be difficult to sustain over the long haul.
Also, analysts noted that although the flip-top screen is an improvement over many existing models that also use liquid crystal display technology, it still does not offer the kind of resolution found on most desk-top personal computers.
“I think IBM has brought another round of improved price performance and functionality to its product line,” Geran said. “But the screen still relies on the LCD, and so it’s not a breakthrough . . . a step forward but not a giant leap.”
In other industry news, Floating Point Systems, an Oregon company that makes scientific computers, on Wednesday announced a new supercomputer that it said is more powerful even in its medium size than any machine currently available. Financial analysts and academic researchers who attended the company’s afternoon news conference agreed that the architecture of the T Series supercomputers made them the most powerful available.
Times staff writer Paul Richter, in New York, contributed to this story.
