Tag: brand comeback

Article

Gateway Is Back and Making Laptops | Gizmodo

Gateway PCs return as Walmart exclusives, priced from $200 to $1200 | PC World

Holy cow! Gateway laptops return via Walmart exclusive | ZDNet

From the horse’s mouth

Walmart USA

Product Listing with prices

My Comments

Gateway, initially known as Gateway 2000, was a computer brand associated with affordable DOS/Windows personal computer packages that conveyed an increasing amount of value for money. This meant that you could get something decent and reliable for a price you wouldn’t quibble about.

Here, this company assembled the computers within the USA and sold them through bricks-and-mortar computer stores through a significant number of cities in North America. It is similar to how Radio Shack operated around the world through the 1970s and 1980s where you could get a decent piece of equipment at an affordable price. This happened from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s but they were known for a particular brand identity.

This identity was conveyed in the products’ packaging using spots associated with some dairy-cow breeds, relating to the company kicking off in rural America. As well, they ran multi-page ads in the various American computer magazines which effectively told a story and set a scene that related to American life through the years while advertising the various computer specials.

But it was taken over by Acer and subsequently extinguished. Bow Gateway has made a comeback to the USA market with a range of Windows laptops and Android tablets being sold at affordable prices.

Gateway equipment will end up being sold through Walmart, as part of the brand’s original vision to sell through a bricks-and-mortar storefront. It is very similar to how some of the consumer-electronics brands we have loved and reminisce about like AWA or Rank Arena are being sold – exclusively through particular big-box discount-store chains. Some people see this approach of bringing hack these classic brands, often associated with decent value-for-money goods, as a way for retailers to evoke nostalgia that surrounds them. This kind of brand comeback occurs during hard times as people seek comfort in the nostalgia of prior brands

In other countries for example, Aldi is doing something very similar by selling some computers and consumer electronics equipment through their discount supermarkets under their own Medion or Tevion brands.

The Windows-powered laptop range offered by Gateway will use Intel or AMD CPU and NVIDIA RTX graphics horsepower and be available at the different performance classes expected of today’s laptops. There will also be mobile-platform tablets that run Android in Gateway’s product line.

For example, their Ultra Thin series of laptop computers starts at USD$200 for a machine kitted out with a 11.6” Full HD screen, and an AMD A4 processor at least.. Here, a decent machine would set you back around US$500 and give you an Intel Core i5 current-spec CPU, 16Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD storage, 14.1” Full HD screen and an HD webcam. The most expensive option would be a multimedia laptop for US$999 having a 15.6” screen and performance specifications for gaming and content creation. This one even has NVIDIA RTX 2060 GPU for its graphics infrastructure.

This return to form by Gateway is being seen as viable due to reinvigorated market interest in regular computers especially laptops, and mobile-platform tablets being used at home. This is due to COVID-19 driving us more to work, run our businesses or study from home and we are relying on these devices for these activities including the many Zoom calls we make.

This will open up a stronger interest in second-tier brands including retailers’ private labels and distributor-exclusive labels stepping up to the plate when it comes to offering value-priced open-platform computing equipment for consumers.

Article

VAIO computers to return to the US to woo high-end customers | CNET News

My Comments

The Sony VAIO Fit 13a – VAIO is returning to the USA independently from Sony

Regular readers will have seen the product reviews of some of Sony’s VAIO laptop computers. These were positioned by Sony at the premium end of the market and had specifications and features that were considered “out of he ordinary” as far as Windows-based computers were concerned. An example of this was a Sony VAIO Pro 13 laptop that had a display resolution that was better than the Apple MacBook Air that was issued at the time the VAIO was marketed and various reviews said that this computer could earn its keep as a photographer’s field computer. Similarly, I had seen a DJ in action use a Sony VAIO laptop computer rather than an Apple MacBook as a playout device.

As the bottom was falling out of the “regular-computer” market thanks to the cheaper mobile-platform tablets, Windows 8 and other issues in 2014, Sony sold off their VAIO computer division to an independent investment fund. This fund continued to sell a smaller product range of computers under the VAIO brand which used to be a “sub-brand” of Sony’s for this product class. This range, which was sold in Japan only, was tightly focused around a few premium ultraportable computers. People after this brand tended to “grey-import” the computers from Japan whether online or as part of a foray in to that country.

Sony VAIO Fit 15e

Now VAIO have released these computers in to the US market through an online storefront and the Microsoft Stores in that country. Here, they are selling high-end portable computers that are focused around the “made in Japan” ideal which is similar to the way that some parts of Western Europe like Scandinavia or the Germanic countries (West Germany, Austria or Switzerland) were seen through the 1960s to the 1980s when it came to consumer electronics and photographic equipment – a purveyor of finely-crafted premium equipment.

The first of these is a VAIO Z Canvas which is a 12.3”  2-in-1 with a wireless keyboard. The screen resolution is 2560×1704 and it uses an Intel Core i7 for horsepower and has up to 16Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD storage. This will be offered as a Signature Edition computer that comes out of the box with Microsoft Windows 10 and no bloatware on board. The expected price will be US$2199 which would make you think of it like purchasing a the computer equivalent of a B&O or Loewe TV.

Sony VAIO Tap 20 – an example of an “Adaptive All-In-One” computer

There are plans for VAIO to issue some more of these computers to the US market, more so in the form of traditional laptops (hear here, VAIO Fit 15e) and some desktops perhaps of the “gaming-rig” or “all-in-one” ilk. Personally, if VAIO were to have their fingers in the traditional “bricks-and-mortar” pie, I would recommend that they follow what Bose and B&O have done where they either run their own stores in upper-class neighbourhoods or work the “store within a store” method where they set up shop in premium department stores.

What it is showing is that computer brands are finding that working within certain profitable niches such as performance computers (mobile workstations or gaming-grade laptops) or premium computer ranges is considered a way to survive. This is similar to how a few American and European AV names focused on premium-grade photographic, audio and video equipment when Asian companies took on the mass-market for this class of equipment through the latter part of the 20th century

Who knows if VAIO will return to Europe, Australia or New Zealand?