Rugged Notebooks: Just how tough are they?

Making a play

The combination of rugged technology, increased mobility and a higher valuation of data is presenting the channel with a durable opportunity.

"A lot of people want to do ruggedised but you need to have the customer first," Pioneer Computers product manager, Jeff Li, said.

"For resellers it is a good opportunity as well. Some corporate or government resellers are pretty strong in the market. If you are selling a normal notebook there is actually not much margin on that. If they can get their hands on a ruggedised version then the margin is pretty good - 10-20 per cent easily."

With even semi-rugged notebooks often costing double that of mainstream versions it is important, however, to clearly understand and identify appropriate verticals to target, according to Lenovo's Ruettinger.

"Think very carefully about what a customer actually needs and what vertical you are going to go for," he said. "And if you do decide to go for the top-end ruggedised vertical market just make sure you are going to get enough volume to make sense out of it because if you look at the market share data of what is ruggedised and what is not, it is a niche market at this point."

But by familiarising themselves with the technology and using both live demonstrations and video promotional materials the channel can adeptly distinguish themselves from regular mainstream players. In addition, the channel should highlight the lower repair rates and reduced total cost of ownership that can be achieved with rugged technology.

"For me it really is in that upsell," HP market development manager for commercial notebooks, Janet Bradburn, said. "It is worth them [the channel] educating themselves on these features because it does give them an opportunity to get loyalty from the customer and also get the most from every sale. It's getting the customer to spend that little bit more to get a better product. That will give them a better experience."

Rugged future

The rugged and semi-rugged notebook market can also expect to experience further technological developments going forward.

According to Toshiba's Tumminello, notebooks are moving on from traditional hard drives to solid-state drives which hold the promise of lower failure rates. While price, speed and capacity do not currently match that of traditional hard disk drives, many vendors like Toshiba are working to improve this in order to further ruggedise their range.

Meanwhile, on the outside of notebooks other vendors point to composite materials, like those used in F1 racing cars and airplanes like the Boeing Dreamliner and A380, as the way forward.

"For us composite materials are the ones that are of most interest. To put that into perspective, they are stronger and lighter than magnesium and titanium, so they give you the best ratio of weight to strength," Lenovo's Ruettinger said. "We'll see increasing uptake of those especially in the ruggedised range where if you go to the very top end of that range where you are talking up to $6000 and perhaps beyond for a system, then you can afford to put more of those space age materials into a system."