Personal computer-maker Hewlett-Packard (HP) is of the opinion that more and more segments are emerging in the personal computer (PC) market. The company is bullish on the premium and gaming segments for laptops in India.

But another area HP will focus on is the ‘Always Connected PCs’ or ACPCs, as the company puts it. Interestingly, according to HP India Managing Director Sumeer Chandra, these connected PCs will be available in the lower-priced range of laptops from the company and will have provisions for being connected with LTE SIM cards.

“Right now, it (this feature) is only available at a certain price point and you will see it coming down,” Chandra told BusinessLine . “More and more customers can actually have access to that,” he said. Chandra also believed that with 5G networks becoming a reality in the next two to three years, such PCs can enable users to consume large amounts of data at high speeds.

“We already have LTE products outside India,” Chandra said. Vickram Bedi, Senior Director for personal systems, HP India, added that based on demand, they could bring them to consumers in Indian in the near future.

HP also has convertibles — laptop-cum-tablets — across the range of its offerings and is trying to bring their prices down. However, the company feels that smartphones have cannibalised stand-alone tablet devices and hence, those do not figure in its plans in a large way.

Touchscreen devices are seeing increased customer usage and applications are being designed for touch devices, which is why HP is adding convertibles to various line-ups like the Envy, Pavilion, Elitebook, etc, Chandra said. As customer usage for touchscreens is increasing, the company is attempting to expand the market by taking it across price-points.

HP, on Wednesday, launched new laptops under its high-end Spectre range. Among them, the HP Spectre Folio is the world’s first convertible leather laptop that is made from genuine, handcrafted leather and not just wrapped in it, according to the company. In India, the Spectre Folio will only come with Intel’s eighth gen Core i7 processors and will have up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 512 GB of solid state drive storage. It is priced at Rs 1,99,990.

The new HP Spectre x360 line-up comes with a new design and a new Poseidon Blue colour, HP said. It features a camera-kill switch that helps with webcam security and starts at Rs 1,29,990. The new range of laptops has Bang & Olufsen-powered audio.

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