Bigger is Better: 17-inch Notebooks Take Retail By Storm

by Matt Sargent
Director of Research, PC Group

I'm not a truck guy. I just don't get it. I have a warped belief that my four door sedan has all the room I need to make it through my daily life. But, living in Southern California, it is impossible to deny the popularity of SUVs. Everyone, from construction workers to soccer moms, swears by the SUV-- and over the last few years the car industry has jumped to fill this highly profitable niche. Everyone from Ford to Porsche now offers an SUV with a huge degree of variation within the segment. The term SUV now applies to vehicles ranging from the high end Cadillac Escalade aimed at 60-something retirees and celebrity athletes to the X-generation inspired Nissan Xterra.

While I don't get the SUV phenomenon, I do grasp a somewhat similar movement within the PC market place. While I am most certainly not a truck guy (the auto mechanic who took me to the cleaners for my last "scheduled" check up will testify to my lack of overall automotive knowledge), I am a tech guy, and the one cool tech toy I have an insatiable appetite for this holiday season is the 17-inch notebook.

When I first heard that Apple was offering a notebook with a 17-inch display I was suspect. I had worked with 16" notebooks and considered the display to be too tall for easy usage. I am not exactly sure what it was about the height of a 16" display that bothered me, but it simply looked disproportionately tall. Perhaps it was a feeling that this was a disaster waiting to happen- envisioning the system tipping over under the weight of its own display. It just didn't seem right. A 17-inch display I reasoned would be even worse. Apple, however, took a new twist on large displays by increasing the width, and not the height of the display, the result being a "wide screen" display not much taller than a 14" notebook. I was immediately struck by how inviting the form factor was and how positively it would resonate within the home market. The biggest problem with the Apple system was price. At $3,299, the original 17-inch Apple PowerBook would not make it beyond the small, but fiercely loyal Apple installed base. While the PowerBook certainly scored well among this group, broad market acceptance was not going to happen at $3,000.

Acceptance within the market came with Toshiba's version of the 17-inch form factor. The Toshiba Satellite P25-Series was born, and with it a whole new market was created. No longer did all notebooks within retail look identical with non-descript 15-inch displays. The P25 was the first SUV of the notebook market, and similar to the acceptance of the SUV, the P25 found immediate success.

Not wanting to miss out on this new market, HP followed Toshiba with the Pavilion zd7000-series. Like the Satellite P25, the Pavilion zd7000 did extremely well in retail becoming one of the top selling notebooks for HP within a few short weeks of its release. Additionally, HP was able to grab interest for the 17-inch form factor in the mid-tier market with a $1,699 zd7000 that performed very well.

In just a few months, the Toshiba Satellite P25 and the HP Pavilion zd7000 drove the 17-inch notebook market from virtually no retail unit sales to almost ten percent of sales. The HP Pavilion zd7020US currently ranks in the top ten models currently sold in retail.

Interestingly, the P25 is everything that a notebook shouldn't be, according to the stereotype of portable PCs. It is VERY heavy weighing in at nearly ten pounds. It is bulky and thick. If "thin and light" are the watch words for notebook design, why has the P25 done so well?

The reason is because the definition of the notebook PC is changing now that the consumer market has become more interested in the segment. Weight isn't important if you are simply moving from one room to another and never plan on taking the system beyond the four walls of your home. Another aspect not necessarily important to the home user is battery life. Who cares if a notebook only gets one and a half hours of battery life if I am within ten feet of a power source at all times?

These differing needs have created a new opportunity for notebook manufacturers, much like car owner's preferences created the SUV. Does a home computer user necessarily "need" a 17-inch notebook? Definitely not-- standard 15-inch or even older 14-inch systems will get the job done. However, a 17-inch widescreen provides a level of differentiation for users looking for more than the standard "vanilla" PC. This differentiation has been a missing component of the PC industry for some time, and like the rush car manufacturers made to the SUV, ARS expects that the computer industry will rush to supply the need created by the 17" form factor.

Now if only my SUV friends wouldn't laugh at my car.

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