LIFTOFF FOR LAPTOPS : Sales of Portable Computers Soar as Once-Aggravating Equipment Improves
Two years ago when a Kawasaki salesman called on a motorcycle dealership, he could only cross his fingers and hope that he had up-to-date data on the customer’s inventory and credit. Unfortunately, in all too many cases, luck wasn’t on the salesman’s side.
Then Kawasaki outfitted its U.S. sales force with $350,000 worth of laptop computers and special software for checking up on customers. Now, armed with a machine that weighs about 15 pounds and squeezes into a briefcase, a traveling Kawasaki salesman can dial the headquarters computer over his cellular car phone or a public phone and instantly get the lowdown on his customers 24 hours a day.
Willy Loman should have had it so good.
“The salesmen can get the latest, most accurate information they need at their convenience,” says Robert Shepard, a vice president at Kawasaki’s U.S. headquarters in Irvine. “They don’t have to play telephone tag with someone at the home office. If they need to, they can get the data at night for the next morning’s sales call.”
Kawasaki is hardly the only company singing the praises of laptop computers. After several years of sub-par technology and disappointing sales, laptops finally are attracting flocks of customers across a broad spectrum of corporate America.
Insurance companies are giving their armies of agents laptops allowing them to provide prospective customers on-the-spot comparisons of different policies. Food manufacturers are passing out the machines to their supermarket representatives to speed orders and improve inventory tracking. Accounting firms are providing them to field auditors for on-site financial analysis.
“We are getting a hell of a lot more information from our sales managers with these machines,” says Robert Pelligrini, a sales specialist at Lipton Foods in New Jersey, where a $2-million laptop buying spree is well under way. “Finally, the laptops have the capabilities we need.”
Thanks to a series of technology breakthroughs that began in 1986--including improved screens, longer battery life and increased power and storage capacity--these portable machines have gone a long way toward living up to their original promise of virtually matching the performance of desktop computers in a package small enough to fit on a user’s knees.
And with the improved products announced just last month by Compaq Computer and NEC Home Electronics, even people who once shunned these machines as clumsy toys admit that their resistance is melting fast. New models due within the next six months from Apple Computer and International Business Machines are expected to speed the trend.
Dataquest, a Silicon Valley market research firm, estimates that about 683,000 laptop models will be sold in 1988, more than triple the number of just two years ago. For 1989, the firm projects sales of 1.1 million machines, a full 10% of the PC market. By 1992, Dataquest estimates annual laptop sales of 1.9 million machines, about 14% of all PCs sold.
“Until very recently, you really had to need portability to put up with those crummy machines,” says Richard Shaffer, a New York technology analyst. “And there weren’t that many people who needed portable machines so badly that they were willing to sacrifice power, speed, memory and legibility.”
Bruce Johnson, manager of the personal computer department for the Big Eight accounting firm of Deloitte Haskins & Sells, is among those who waited for technology to catch up with the promise. And he’s glad he did.
“We’re very excited about the new machines,” says Johnson, who expects to buy up to 90 laptops for the firm’s external audit teams within six months. “For the first time, we can get the performance and the portability in the same package.”
Prices Should Fall
But it isn’t going to come cheap. At prices ranging as high as $11,000 for a fully outfitted, top-of-the-line system, the latest laptop models clearly command a premium for portability. In fact, analysts figure laptops run as much as twice the price of roughly comparable desktop machines.
Still, analysts expect that, as with everything else in the high-tech world, prices eventually will fall. Already, the least expensive laptops, without accessories, have dropped to about $800.
When laptop computers debuted in the early 1980s, they were heralded as something akin to the Second Coming by an enthusiastic first wave of customers, mainly road-weary journalists, hard-core high-tech junkies and assorted other adventuresome--some would say undiscriminating--computer users.
Few others needed the early laptops enough to endure their shortcomings: screens that could display just eight lines of type and that could be read only under ideal lighting conditions, along with limited power and scant data storage capacity.
Nevertheless, as inadequate as the technology was, it represented a considerable improvement over the then-existing state of the art in portability: the so-called “transportable” machines weighing 25 pounds or more. Beyond being heavy, they needed electrical current from an outlet, not a battery pack, limiting their practicality in the field.
When Tandy Corp. unveiled the first true portables in 1983, reporters for computer trade journals and general interest publications “went crazy,” recalls Shaffer, a former technology writer for the Wall Street Journal. “They assumed the world needed portability as much as they did and made a big deal about them.”
The manufacturers geared production to meet the rave reviews. But the buyers never materialized in the numbers predicted by the early converts.
Breakthroughs in Design
“What we learned is that people aren’t going to just give up anything willingly for portability,” says Michael Murphy, editor of the California Technology Stock Letter in San Francisco. “People who had to have portability, like reporters, auditors and field project managers, paid the price.”
But with time, that price has dropped.
Over the last 2 1/2 years, there have been major breakthroughs in the design and technology of laptops.
Among the first was an increase in the size of the display screen. Although they are generally not as large as those on desktop monitors, they display at least 16 lines of type. Some of today’s newest models can display up to 25 lines of 80 characters each.
The screens are also much easier to read. As early liquid crystal displays gave way to gas plasma technology, characters became decipherable even under poor lighting conditions. Back-lit screens, where the light source is behind the screen, marked a further advance--they can be read in dimly lit airplanes and trains.
The latest breakthrough on this front, the so-called page-white screen, displays black characters on a background as white as a sheet of paper.
Chip-making advances have allowed manufacturers to take advantage of a type of semiconductor that uses less power and operates at a lower temperature. Consequently, laptops can be packed with more chips, increasing operating speed and power.
And with the declining size and battery power requirements of hard disk drives, laptops can be equipped with enough data storage capacity to hold documents and sophisticated programs used in the office.
As a result, most laptop computers today already are considerably lighter than their earlier counterparts. Among the very lightest is NEC’s new Ultralite, which weighs less than 4 1/2 pounds and is less than 1 1/2 inches thick. Even the most sophisticated machines from Compaq, Toshiba Corp. and Zenith Electronics weigh in the neighborhood of just 15 pounds.
Battery Packs Next Frontier
“We’re not asking people to buy crippled machines anymore,” Murphy says. “I think we are finally there.”
Not everyone agrees. Even manufacturers acknowledge that there is still much work to be done if laptops are going to be regarded as full equivalents of desktop machines.
But further breakthroughs are already on the horizon.
The next and most important of them is in technology to shrink the size and extend the life of the battery packs that power laptops when they are not plugged into direct electrical current.
Recently, Chips & Technologies, a Silicon Valley integrated circuit maker, announced a set of chips designed especially for laptops that include a new “sleep mode” feature. It automatically shuts off power to parts of the computer not in use.
Battery life, as a result, can be extended to six or eight hours, up from two to four hours now. Analysts predict that additional advances, including increased reliance on chips and disk drives that operate on little power, will lead to 12-hour battery lives.
As battery packs are improved, fewer will be needed to power the computers, allowing their weight to drop further.
Color displays are expected within the next year. At least one Japanese manufacturer, Sharp Electronics, has developed a multicolor liquid crystal display for these machines, and other Japanese manufacturers are said to be close to similar breakthroughs.
With these advances and others generally expected over the next 24 months, analysts say laptops will achieve their original promise of performing like desktop machines.
Already Compaq and NEC have introduced so-called “docking stations” to speed the process.
These stations, which plug into the laptop machine, provide the portable computer with a permanent “home,” complete with an electrical connection, cables for printers and other peripheral equipment and room for expansion boards. When the portable computer docks, it is a fully equipped system.
The theory is that users could have stations on their desks at home and at the office and shuttle the actual computer between the two landing spots, as well as to any necessary stops on the road.
“If you have a laptop, there is really no reason to have a PC at home or at the office,” says James V. Cosby, national accounts manager of the Laptop Shop, a New York speciality store. “You can take the machine home; you can take it to work.”
Bruce Lupatkin, a personal computer analyst for the San Francisco brokerage of Hambrecht & Quist, agrees. Eventually, Lupatkin predicts, portability will be just like any other option on a computer.
“The personal computer market--whether desktop or laptop--is going in the same direction: deliver the most power in the smallest space,” he says. “So, if you want a portable machine, you can get that, just like you can get a color monitor or any other nice feature on a PC.”
