Wal-Mart gets serious about back-to-school
US RETAIL EMPIRE Wal-Mart is aiming to become a major force in PC sales during the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, broadening its selection of portable PCs by 40 per cent and driving entry-level notebook prices sharply lower.
From Sunday the discount chain of big-box stores will be offering an exclusive HP Compaq Presario notebook for just $298 (£180.55 or €209.13). That will be $250 less than a similar notebook that the company is presently selling for $548.
The notebook will have 3GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive and it will be preloaded with Windows Vista.
In the UK, currently the cheapest laptop available from Wal-Mart owned Asda is an ageing £247 eMachines effort with a 667MHz Athlon 64 and 1GB RAM.
In the US Wal-Mart will also be selling a Dell Inspiron notebook PC for $398 as well as an Acer laptop with an 8-hour battery, 3GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive along with a free upgrade to Windows 7 for $548. The relentlessly price-cutting US retailer plans to extend its PC line-up further, with an HP netbook and a larger Dell laptop also due to go on sale by summer's end.
In the UK, Asda also plans to expand its laptop range upwards not downwards, a spokesperson told us.
This aggressive PC pricing is sure to send shockwaves through the US PC market, and if it is successful in gaining market share Wal-Mart might expand the strategy to Asbo we imagine.
Either way this will put further pressure on already stressed PC manufacturers along with competing retailers, tend to drive down the prices of smaller netbooks as well as used notebooks, and be cheered by recession stretched back-to-school and holiday season PC shoppers. µ
L'Inq
Reuters
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A well known, very exclusive, golf course just a few miles west of me has absolutely NO membership fee.
But as a new member you soon discover their brand of balls are required and they cost $500 each.
Uh huh, they get you by the balls.
Wally-World is not a charitable organization; just ask a few former employees.
The race for the lowest priced product is a game that Wal-mart plays well. It should be no surprise that they are the ones with this low price point. The economy in the USA is pretty poor right now. Needs of students for computers don't go away because just because of economic conditions though. It makes sense that companies will seek to serve this population in bad times just as they do in good.
The real question is, will Wal-Mart sustain this price going forward? Will a competitor find an even cheaper unit? As the “low price leader” Wal-mart has a reputation to uphold. Time will tell if this is just a gimmick or a real commitment to carrying a low cost option.
One correction... it's an Athlon 64 1.69GHz with DDR2 667MHz memory