Rick Nelson

Marketers give engineering its due
May 17, 2007

Would you pay more for better engineering? When it comes to computers, Lenovo hopes so, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Lenovo is pitching the durability and engineering pedigree of its laptops. As a part of the push, the company's sales reps regularly stand and bounce on the laptops during sales pitches to corporate clients.” But the article cautions that Lenovo’s strategy might be a risky one: “In an industry dominated by a brutal pricing rivalry, championing quality over cost is a bold tactic. ThinkPad laptops…are priced about 10% higher than the industry average.”

New ThinkPad features, the article says, include a battery-life-extension setting, a magnesium roll cage, and “airbag technology that senses when the computer is being jerked around and instantly protects the hard drive,” which I assume indicates an accelerometer that shuts down the HDD on detecting vibration—a feature on other makes as well.

In any event, a new ad campaign will use this tagline: "From the world's best engineers come the world's best-engineered PCs."

It’s nice to see ad people and marketers giving engineering its due, and I can say that I would be more than happy to pay a 10% premium for solid engineering. Of course, I don’t expect to be buying a new laptop over the next year or two.

The article concludes by quoting Kirk Yang, a technology hardware analyst for Citigroup in Hong Kong: "From a toughness perspective, there's still a pretty big gap between ThinkPad and their closest competitors. But now that PCs are a commodity product, there's a big market of consumers who care only about price."

Posted by Rick Nelson on May 17, 2007 | Comments (1)