Toshiba's Justin White
Key market plays for Toshiba for 2015?
We’re bringing out a new range of products throughout the year including a fanless design of notebook computers with lower noise and longer battery life.
We’re seeing a paradigm shift where people can now get two days of computing out of one charge.That will be a key play moving forward especially with the release of fifth generation Intel CPUs.
We’re also seeing a much stronger interest from our resellers and customers in smaller screen sizes for B2B market with a shift towards 11-inch, 13-inch and 14-inch screens. Customers are appreciating that they bought a notebook for a reason - to either take it home or to a customer’s site. If it’s smaller, thinner and lighter, it’s easier to take with you.
Key technology trends?
The launch of Intel’s fifth generation CPU and Microsoft’s new operating system coming out later this year will shake up the B2B community a bit, causing customers to decide if they’re going to request products with Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10.
That’s going to bring its own inherent challenges as everyone tries to get around the numerous benefits of Windows 10, but when will they migrate to it?
What is your key message to the channel?
We’re still 100 per cent channel focused and we’ve got a number of incentives and campaigns this year to assist partners in selling as much volume of B2B products as they can. We’re going to continue to allow them access to our entire range of products, and bring out new products into the market such as the Z20T, which allows them to compete with other detachable style products in the market that they may not have access to.
Key warning to the channel?
It’s not necessarily a warning, but we’re starting to see a lot of customers re-investing in their computer hardware. In the past couple of years, they’ve been upgrading their tablets or buying new ones, but now they’re looking at their primary computing device and realising it may be four or five years old and certainly no where near as powerful as their new breed of notebooks. This brings an inherent amount of opportunities for resellers with services, support and helping customers migrate as they move into thinner ultra books.
If you can’t sell the hardware, you can’t provide the services that come along with it.
Key to Toshiba’s success this year?
We’re going to continue providing high quality products that resellers know aren’t going to fail and we’re also going to bring out a range of innovative products such as the Z20T, and new iterations of B2B ultrabooks.
We’re also going to launch a range of solutions services that resellers can sell on to small and medium businesses, allowing them to manage and control the customers fleet of notebooks, providing an ongoing revenue-based system.
