Mitsubishi Electric UK Ltd is cutting its 80286 laptop prices by UKP500 in an effort to gain a competitive edge as the laptop market hots up in the UK. Computer product manager Bryan Martyr says that the pricing threshold for the laptop market is set to change over the next six months as more colour screen products come out, thereby pushing down prices for monochrome products. The ensuing ripple effect will force Taiwanese manufacturers to price their products even more competitively. Consequently, Mitsubishi is firing the first shot by cutting the price of its 40Mb mp286L-240`tf UKP2,300 from UKP2,800, while its entry level fixed disk model, the mp286L-220 now costs UKP1,700. The mp286L range was introduced in August 1988 and since then 3,500 of the things have been sold in the UK, Mitsubishi claims. The company reckons that it has a good distribution channel in place and is ready to go in for some aggressive marketing. It has decided to cut its gross margins rather than spend more money staging an advertising campaign, and is anxious to get a strong end-user loyalty to its products prior to the launch of a new family of laptops, which is planned for next year. Mitsubishi is promoting its current laptops as fully portable workstations that are suitable for networking – and considering that they were some of the least expensive 80286-based laptops before the price cuts, the machines certainly appear to have the pricing edge at the moment. However, other laptop manufacturers are undoubtedly planning price cuts at this moment – and only the biggest are likely to survive a price war.
