‘Today’ belongs to innovation

Mohsin S. Jaffri
from Manchester, UK

Computers of all type, desktops and laptops have become part and parcel of daily lives of peoples all over the world. Modern technology, frequently coming up with new innovations has made it possible for households and businesses to have most of the information they needed on their fingertips. In the fast moving world, it’s not hours and minutes but seconds that matter in getting information for decision making and thus making life that much easy-going and comfortable. While many companies and organisations have taken a lead in going for user friendly gadgets and equipments, some have spent millions and billions of dollars in going for the state-of-the-art machines in the excellence category – giving the best that there is, or is possible, to satisfy the growing needs of a wider spectrum of people, in advanced societies to ambitious ones in trying to find a place in the global divide; the wider classification – from under-developed to emerging or developing and advanced worlds.

The need for innovative technology in day-to-day affairs is becoming a necessity for people from all walks of life across the globe. In this environment, Hewlett-Packard, popularly known as HP, gathered a think-tank and went into creating a machine with near-perfect type end product – some 11 notebooks, the touch-based technology, a billion-colour scheme, LED display and a new generation of state-of-the-art PCs.

In the historical city of Berlin, a city where sometime ago, in a revolutionary environment, the East and West dividing barriers were removed by the strong will of the people and their desire for togetherness and cultural connectivity. In this city, the HP opened a new chapter by unveiling and introducing its newest products to the world. Hundreds of people from all over the world came to see the marvels achieved by the HP and its dedicated team of people, in the marketing, designing, consumers’ product and notebooks business. The ‘touch’ technology with its modern uses was very much in evidence. The city of Berlin became a showcase for “Connecting Your World” and the machine and manner to “connectivity” that will bring the “global village” concept to a technological reality.

It was in this environment that questions were floating around and answers were coming fast, intellectually balanced, technologically deep and with a view of the future, and above all – simple and making sense.

The opening question to Satjiv S. Chahil, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing was, what drives you and your team to come up with products like you have unveiled in this conference – ‘what’ and ‘why’ seems to be an all important question at this stage.

“Yes”, said Satjiv and then came a thoughtful reply – he went on to explain that the world market drives a hard bargain when we ask them of their requirements. The market all over the world is full of computers, notebooks, mobile phones and similar related products offering users a number of functions. But as we probed deeper and went on to assess the product-range we realised that usability and user-friendly concept was to some extent very week and at times missing. This brought us to try and give some thing innovative and worthy of our name to our consumers. This made our R&D group go all out in finding, producing, putting together, and combining designs and functions to produce required results at the touch of a finger. Over 3 billion dollars research programme and our determination to give the best that there can be in notebook technology kept us going until we came up with something that was ahead of the ‘present’ and had advanced into the future – a technology that can well be described as of “touch” and go.

Now while introducing our newest products we feel that we as an organisation have fulfilled our promise to our consumers and we feel delighted when we hear the sound of “wow” as soon as consumers make the first “touch” to assess the product and realise how personal this product can be. This “wow” is our reward and the HP is quite proud of that.

“What has lead us to success is the determination of our dedicated team – their inspiration in finding the best that their can be – was the turning point in our efforts to find “the very best and very friendly” computers, much advanced in technology than just the present. Our concept brought two major points to work together – not just the industrial design but more based on user experience and thus every little detail was thought over and over again and worked out for its practability – and this made us redesign the entire line – in just 12 months period keeping in mind our signature, material innovation and modernity – the challenge was usability plus industry standards. Here we settled with something very new and different - technology friendly, user friendly and requirement-friendly performance. The material used has the tank like stability/ strength, the look is most modern and fashionable and the top of the line product “HP Voodoo” is top in luxury / usability and to some extent a miracle product.

Having the opportunity to talk to the high-ups in HP, it was the turn of Chin Hon Cheng, Vice President, Consumer Products & Mobile Business Group and Personal Systems Group, Asia Pacific and Japan, and Ted Clark, Senior Vice President & General Manager Notebook Global Business Unit to answer a few questions.

To a question how the HP products have been welcomed in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, the confident reply was that these are our growing markets for HP products and that the rate of growth is much better than European and other advanced countries.

“We are the worldwide leaders of notebooks in this region and have been for long time and have seen the market regenerating and reinvigorating constantly. In this area, our target segment is basically small business and consumers. The key factor in notebook business is “connectivity” and this is what our products, in various range have taken care of. The products are on “time and design” factor and that is where we stand upright in this market.

To a question on pricing structure considering various markets especially the emerging and developing countries, the reply was that, “We certainly look into the pricing structure with various markets in mind – we spend a tremendous amount of time – surveying and understanding various markets, their requirements and needs. The products and price structure is very much market friendly. In most of the Asian markets, price and product does matter and that is one our consideration when launching a product in new or established markets.

“Our products can be classified into such segments like, business, low-middle income and then luxury segment. Even the luxury products have a market in China and India.”

“On the range of products – the reply was that there are 7-platforms in the notebook sector and wide ranging price structure. The products are re-looked into every two years and this is a sort of ‘refresh’ period for our products.”

Going into development philosophy, we were explained that:

our philosophy is to be fair and honest to our customers for them to trust us

Give them the product they want

Specific products for some regions like USA but a limited quantity introduced in other markets too

In china the college going population equals the total population of the world so just imagine of our market in young mind oriented products – our product is based on their lifestyle – connectivity and needs

Well, the “Connecting Your World was an experience out of this world – where products of extraordinary capabilities were introduced and the visitors from the world over were enjoyed the venue thoroughly and took with them the ‘knowledge’ based products having personal aspect and ‘connectivity’ written all over them.