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.
The new XG200, the third generation of this model, is the fourth major product release this year, a torrent by the Janam historical rate of product releases.
The big opportunity here is for Pivot3 partners who sell into the military/intel part of the U.S. defense space, but other NATO countries can be sold it as well, and it also has other use cases in rugged environments.
Panasonic has made major changes to its product set and its channel go-to-market mechanisms in order to better expand in enterprise markets outside their rugged PC stronghold.
The two new devices, the Toughbook T1 and the L1, with the latter designed for landscape viewing, become Panasonic offerings for lesser demanding rugged environments. The N1, their offering above the new devices in the market, has been enhanced.
In addition to the Chromebook 11 C732, Acer also announced a new ChromeBox offering, as well as a retail-focused convertible Chromebook.
In addition to providing increased benefits for those partners who elect to sell only Panasonic rugged notebooks, Panasonic has also increased its investment in a channel account team to provide more reps to work with partners.
8GB memory is now standard, up from 4 GB, with the high end model moving from 8GB to 15 GB. The keyboard is now backlit with red rather than white for better nighttime use.
These machines, targeted mainly at standard retail outlets, have met with a strong initial response, selling more units before launch than other Zebra phones typically sell in 3-5 months.
The new models include Lenovo’s first Yoga form factor for the K-12 market. Combat kits for the new offerings are also coming to channel partners.
The new family of twelve models will replace the 3400 and 3500 rugged scanners, and will be priced at the same point as the earlier models, while offering significantly improved quality.
Janam’s second Android entry has a smaller form factor than the first. This is also the first machine in its class to have the new Android 5 Lollipop OS.
