Carrying low-cost, ultra-portable notebook computers is fast catching up among PC users, especially with such machines flooding the local market over the past year. They come in screen sizes of 12.1 inches and below and now priced at less than RM2,000.

Ultra-portables previously have been known for their premium price and used more in the enterprise market. But with rising demand from price-conscious consumers, more players are expected to announce their ultra-portable notebook brands soon.

According to IDC Malaysia’s associate analyst, personal systems research group Jaygan Fu Ponnudurai, the main push for ultra-portables today is their attractive price point. What used to be among the most expensive line of notebooks has now become one of the cheapest.

“Ultra-portable notebooks like Asus’ Eee PC and Twinhead’s Efio 10D fare well among second-PC owners, especially during travels, and low-PC-usage users.”

The use of ultra-portables is not just seen among regular consumers, but also among top executives. If a chief executive were to travel overseas on official duty, he will just upload the necessary files onto his ultra-portable, Jaygan explains.

“And from a security standpoint, if the ultra-portable were to get stolen, the company will not suffer huge confidential data leaks.”

Vendors are able to bring down the prices of ultra-portables by incorporating the Linux operating system and OpenOffice software into these products. But it must be noted that such software are suitable only for low PC usage such as surfing the Internet and straightforward word processing, Jaygan points out.

Commenting on the trend of vendors moving in the ultra-portable notebook direction, he says vendors have been moving towards the sub-RM2,000 notebook segment because local PC consumers are generally still price-conscious, especially students and the outstation market.

“They always compare specifications like memory size, Webcam feature and hard disk space among brands instead of favouring a particular vendor,” he explains, and interestingly, “consumers, especially in the outstation market, tend to buy PCs based on advice of local retailers, so trust instilled within consumers towards retailers is vital in most PC purchases.”

Based on a recent IDC study, the size of the portable computer market in Malaysia for the first quarter of this year is 329,006 units. Close to 60 per cent of the notebooks sold fall under the category of RM2,500 and below.

The research firm estimates that the compound annual growth rate for the portable computer market is expected to be 8.3 per cent for the next five years.

“Low-cost PCs will mainly fill the gap of certain niche markets which have lower demand on certain features of portables. We expect low-cost notebooks to do better in other emerging countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines due to their lower income per capita in comparison to Malaysia,” Jaygan says.