Samsung returns to US laptop market

SOUTH KOREAN electronics heavyweight Samsung is re-entering the US laptop market to join in the holiday buying season. It unveiled a broad array of four notebook models in the US on Tuesday.

The company hopes to lure potential customers away from Apple's super-slim Macbook Air notebook, smaller netbooks and bulkier desktop replacement laptop PCs. In addition to its aim at Apple, Samsung seems to want to take some market share from all the other laptop sellers in the US, including primarily HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony and Asustek.

Samsung's NC10 is its new netbook model, the two X-series models are its latest entries in the premium notebook and business laptop markets, respectively, while the R610 seems to be aimed at the large screen portable desknote market.

The NC10 netbook runs on an Intel Atom chip, has a 10-inch screen, a 160GB hard drive, an 89 per cent of full sized keyboard, and a six-cell battery said to last about four hours. The NC10 comes only preloaded with Volish Windows XP Home Edition and is priced at $499.

The X360 weighs in at 2.8 pounds, runs on an Intel Centrino 2 ultra low voltage chip with DDR2 memory and an integrated graphics chipset with an HDMI port, has an ultra-thin tapered wedge magnesium alloy case, a 13-inch screen in a brushed aluminum top, pebble style keyboard, and comes with either hard drive or SSD storage. The X360 is priced at $1,899 with a 120GB hard drive or $2,499 with 128GB SSD storage, twice the 64GB SSD storage in Apple's Macbook Air that presently sells for $2,598.

The X460 is similar to the X360 but it weighs 4.2 pounds, runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 or P8400 chip with Nvidia Geforce 9200 graphics, and has a 14-inch screen and an internal optical drive. The P7350 CPU version with a 250GB hard drive is priced at $1,599, while the P8400 CPU version with a 300GB hard drive is priced at $1,699.

The R610 has the same Nvidia Geforce 9200 graphics as the X460 but it mounts a 16-inch widescreen display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1,920 by 1,080 pixels 1080p resolution. R610 prices will start at $1,049.

"These products really go after Apple and Sony. This is the MacBook Air killer," Bret Berg, senior product manager for Samsung US, told Reuters.

Of course Samsung would like to be perceived as competing primarily with Apple in the high-end premium notebook market, but the array of models it has launched shows that it's pushing a broad advance into the US laptop market at strategic points, if not all levels. µ

See Also
Samsung's lighter-than-air laptop
Samsung joins the netbook fray

L'Inqs
Reuters
PC Magazine