SMBs Go for New Form Factor PCs
Customers are finally in the market for new PCs, but skip the traditional desktop model and talk about mini-notebooks for travelers and all-in-ones for the tech-trendy.
By Carolyn Heinze
As the economy starts to rebound, SMBs are in the market for new PCs—but not PCs in the traditional sense. 
Today’s SMBs are seeking computers with less conventional form factors that suit both practical and aesthetic needs.
Richard Shim, research manager for the personal computing program at market research firm IDC, says that all-in-one models make sense for SMBs. “An all-in-one is sleeker, and a lot of buyers tend to appreciate clean design and the lack of unnecessary cables,” he says. “It gives you a certain image of technological savvy if you have one of them in a very public area.”
Shim believes that ultra-thin PCs, introduced last year, won’t make as much of an impact on the SMB market. “The point behind them was to take advantage of a couple of trends in the industry: one was portability, another was battery life, and then there was price-for-performance,” he says.
The problem, though, was when it came to battery life, OEMs did not target the needs of professionals. “OEMs were focusing on battery life for consumers, which often isn’t as much of a priority because consumers tend to use their notebooks inside their homes [where there is] access to electricity.” Ultra-thins, according to Shim, also haven’t offered the price-for-performance that people were expecting.
One form factor that appeals to SMBs is mini-notebooks, which are usually more convenient tools for mobile professionals. Shim urges channel partners to keep this in mind when making the sale: Whereas we used to measure the PC market according to PCs per household, now the metric focuses on the number of PCs per person.
“You can have a mini-notebook for when you’re on the road because it’s really portable, but then you can also bring it back to the office and use a larger system,” says Shim. This, however, creates a situation in which data resides on two machines. But as Shim points out, channel partners are well-positioned to “encourage the concept of a multi-PC user, as well as the use and demand for synchronization technology that connects those two devices.”
