Following the announcement of battery-powered laptop computers from Sharp Electronics and Compaq during the week Honeywell Bull UK Ltd is now offering two laptops for the price of one in an attempt to steal a march on its rivals. There is little competition in the laptop marketplace at the moment and Honeywell’s director of volume products David Austin believes the company can buy market share before Sharp and Compaq begin volume shipments in the new year. Made by Zenith Data Systems, the 12MHz, 80286-based PC AP-L laptop is also a battery powered machine and comes with either 20Mb or 40Mb fixed disk, 1.4Mb 3.5 diskette, 1Mb memory and a 640 by 400 pixel screen. The machines are available from Honeywell’s Express catalogue selling arm which accounts for 20% of the company’s business in the UK. It had a turnover of UKP14m last year, compared with UKP1.7m in its first year of operation in 1985, and is forecasting sales of UKP27m this year. All of Honeywell’s volume products – personal computers, peripherals and supplies – are sold through the Express catalogue; 80% go direct to end users and 20% through dealers. The offer on laptops is open until the end of the year with the 20Mb machines costing UKP3,200, and the 40Mb machines UKP4,000.
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