Dell's Ultrabook is "selling out"... to businesses

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 1 May 2012 at 08:38

Dell's XPS 13 is selling out, a company executive has claimed, suggesting at least one company is having success with Ultrabooks.

The Dell XPS 13 is the PC maker's first Ultrabook, and picked up a PC Pro Recommended Award in our Labs earlier this year.

"We can't build enough of them at the moment," Sam Burd, vice president of Dell's Consumer and SMB (small and medium business) product group, told CNet. He wouldn't reveal detailed figures, but said it was "a little bit less than three times the expected demand".

Much of the success isn't from consumers, however. "Half the sales of the XPS 13 are coming from enterprise customers," Burd said. "That's a lot of its success."

Earlier this year, another Dell executive claimed the firm was no longer a PC company, but now focused on enterprise IT.

While the figures show the Ultrabook idea - thin, attractive laptops with long battery life and solid processing power - is grabbing sales, the high-end, business-focused XPS line of laptops pre-dates Intel's marketing push.

At the end of last year, Dell reported in a results filing that the XPS line posted 207% revenue growth, comprising 20% of Dell's consumer laptop sales and 30% of its profits.