The big one in terms of thought leadership is VR Classroom 2, although updates of core Chromebook and Yoga solutions and a new Chromebook tablet will put more money in partners’ pockets.
For the channel, major announcements around the X1 Fold notebook and the Yoga 5G will initially be more about showing customers a cutting edge than selling them a product, but some less splashy Smart Office announcements will bring a more direct return.
In addition to a new premium family in Dell’s Latitude commercial laptop line, other commercial market products being introduced around CES include new monitors and an updated XPS 13.
HP announces new financing and leasing options through an expansion of their partnership with HPE Financial Services, and a new partnership with global financing firm DLL Group. They also indicated more financing partners will be added.
Carmine Cinerari, who has led Sharp Electronics Canada since 2008, talks with ChannelBuzz about the company’s re-emergence since its acquisition by Foxconn, and particularly how channel-focused changes in Canada have grown the business.
HP targets mobile power users with a solution whose software allows remote access to access pooled workstation power from almost any device.
As part of an expansion of its consumption-based and as-a-service offerings, Dell’s PC-as-a-Service offering is also being extended further downmarket, to the tiniest of businesses.
The new Elite Dragonfly is HP’s first notebook to include recycled plastics, part of an HP-wide pledge to use recycled goods for 30 percent of its plastic by 2025.
Lenovo adds to the portfolio of SMB-focused products it introduced at their Accelerate event this spring with two new models, including their first 15 inch one in this series.
Microsoft outlines the opportunity around the upcoming end of support for Windows 7 at D&H Canada’s Technology Show in the Toronto area.
The modular expansion capability will likely please channel partners unhappy at how long it took to get product in their hands in the past, as this will make it much easier to customize the laptops in the field.
HP also is announcing the new HP VR Backpack, a new version of their wearable PC.
While the preview of Lenovo’s foldable PC was the big ‘wow’ factor at the Lenovo Accelerate event, the launch of the new ThinkBooks is really the big news for partners this year.
Other products also announced as part of an Intelligent Transformation there were the new SMB-focused ThinkBook sub-brand and the new ThinkPad X1 Extreme Generation 2.
After most of the first day announcements focused on things which spanned multiple elements of the Dell Technologies portfolio, and beyond, the second day focused on core product enhancements. Here are some of them.
Katigbak, who had been acting as Connolly’s interim replacement since Connolly’s promotion in January, has now received his official promotion as well.
Lenovo traditionally makes channel-focused product announcements at CES as well as consumer product, and this year they announced significant refreshes of their flagship commercial devices.
Dell has multiple announcements coming at next week’s CES show, but they decided to drop this one early. The new Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is not as sexy as some of the announcements coming next week, but for Dell’s commercial market partners and customers, it will be the most important.
Rugged laptops are a tiny part of Dell’s portfolio. They are looking to expand that, bringing more functionality from their other PC lines into their ruggeds to give them more feature differentiation in the rugged space.
Dell also rebrands the PC-as-a-Service offering they introduced last year as PC-as-a-Service for Enterprise, and also announces a new Dell Provisioning for VMware Workspace ONE service that is also available through both the SMB and Enterprise PCaaS.
