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Toshiba Goes Full Speed Ahead With Satellite 1905

By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 7/21/2003

Sidebars:
Top 10 Notebooks
Success Story: Toshiba Satellite
Toshiba Delivers A True Desktop Replacement

New York— Giving the customer more bang for the same amount of buck is usually a recipe for success.

Toshiba proved this theorem true with last year's introduction of the Satellite 1905-S301 notebook, which was the first to incorporate a full Intel Pentium 4 processor in a mobile platform. The model proved to be one of the best sellers over the past 12 months, said Carl Pinto, Toshiba's director of product marketing.

Pinto said using a Pentium 4 processor, normally found in a desktop PC, instead of the traditional mobile Pentium or mobile Celeron chip was a watershed moment for Toshiba.

Since the 1905 was designed as a desktop replacement notebook, meaning it would spend more time being plugged into a wall socket and sitting on a desk as opposed to running off battery power in an airport, Toshiba could go with the more powerful processor without worrying about battery life. This enabled a more powerful feature set that customers found very appealing.

"This was a step up model that provided good chip speed with a combo CD-RW/DVD drive and the consumers really accepted those features," Pinto said.

Pinto said consumers, who have already purchased several PCs or notebooks, are now savvy enough to understand the benefits the Pentium processor gave to the 1905, and this was the reason it sold so well.

The 1905 began shipping in June 2002, just in time for the back to school selling season, with a suggested price in the $1,599 range.

 

Top 10 Notebooks

Dollar sales at retail, June 2002-June 2003

  1. TOSHIBA 1415-S173
  2. TOSHIBA 1905-S301
  3. TOSHIBA 1115-S103
  4. COMPAQ 2100US
  5. TOSHIBA 1400-S151
  6. TOSHIBA 2435-S255
  7. COMPAQ 906US
  8. HP ZE1210
  9. HP ZE5170
  10. TOSHIBA 2405-S201

Source: The NPD Group ©TWICE 2003

Success Story: Toshiba Satellite

Suggested retail: $1,599

Key Features:

  • Intel Pentium 4 2GHz processor
  • 256MB of RAM
  • 40.0GB Hard drive
  • DVD/CD-RW drive
  • 15-inch LCD

Toshiba Delivers A True Desktop Replacement

By Doug Olenick

New York — Toshiba used its strong reputation as a quality notebook manufacturer to pull off one of the biggest tricks the laptop market has seen in many years, namely placing a power-hungry desktop Pentium 4 chip in a top-of-the-line notebook.

Ahron Shachter, VP/general manager of the New York City-based DataVision, said Toshiba smartly accomplished several tasks with the introduction of the Satellite 1905 last summer.

First, it recognized that with terrorists threats still looming, consumers were travelling less and in turn were less concerned with their laptop's battery life, but at the same time these people were more interested in watching DVDs and using other processor power intensive applications on a notebook. This meant they were willing to accept a notebook computer with a limited battery life because they knew it would likely be used in an environment where it would be plugged into an AC outlet, he said.

Shachter said he was worried when Toshiba first introduced the idea but quickly found out that consumers were not perturbed by not having an energy-efficient Pentium or Celeron mobile chip.

Shachter claimed that Toshiba was probably the only notebook computer vendor that not only could produce what turned out to be a true desktop-replacement notebook, but also, because of its stellar reputation in the industry, convinced retailers and consumers to go along with the idea.

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