Another revolution in waiting

Will MacBook Air make ultrathin laptop a standard in Korea?

By Kim Da-ye

Park Soo-jin, a 24-year old student at the Seoul Women’s University, got her first Apple laptop ― a 13-inch, “ultra thin” Macbook Air ― in August.

Park’s father had been using a MacBook Air and recommended it to her, and she finally got the latest model when the company she interned for in the summer partly subsidized her purchase. Park, a fourth-year Management major, said nearly everyone in that company used a Mac.

“My dad and his friends, who run their own businesses, have all ‘transferred’ to a MacBook Air. I guess they find it convenient to carry the laptop around on business trips because it is very light,” Park said.

Until recently, domestic consumers of any Apple-brand computers have been limited to only the true hard-core fans of the Cupertino, Calif. based tech giant because of their incompatibility with Korea’s IT environment as well as high price tag.

The latest MacBook Air, however, is changing the landscape of the local personal computer market. Like how iPhones revolutionized the smartphone sector, it is transforming the paradigm of a laptop from multi-functional to ultra-portable ― rather gradually.

“The Macbook Air did mark a new era in the laptop market. Other ultra-thin products are all copies of the Air at the end of the day,” Park Hyun-jun, a merchandiser at Enuri, the top domestic price comparison site.

The initial change in this MacBook Air’s revolution is a significant increase in sales in Korea.

Apple does not disclose the sales by country, so the spokesperson for Apple Korea refused to disclose any specific figures related to the sales of MacBook Air. But one source close to the firm said, “We see a remarkable improvement in sales. The latest model is selling much more than the previous one.”

On the Enuri website, the MacBook Air was ranked Friday the third best-seller in both the 11-inch and 13-inch laptop categories after two ultra-slim models by Samsung Electronics.

A source close to Apple’s Korean unit said that the sales of the Apple-brand laptops including the MacBook Pro has surpassed that of the Sony VAIO devices, which Koreans used to adore for the nice design and the high-end brand image.

“The MacBook Air takes the largest portion of our sales even though the unit price is high. When it was released, we even ran out of stock,” said a shop assistant of the a#shop’s branch in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, who did not want his name published. The a#shop is a “premium reseller” for Apple here. The U.S. tech giant doesn’t operate an Apple Store in Korea despite much demand for it.

The firm’s fan base is also growing. An online community called “The official gathering of MacBook Air users” touts nearly 15,000 users while the more comprehensive “People who use Mac” community now has 262,222 members.

Both cafes are filled with daily updates by those who recently bought a MacBook Air, as they share their experiences with the gadget and ask questions.

Globally, Apple has generated $4.59 billion in revenue from portable computers between June and September ― up 44 percent from a year ago. According to a Morgan Stanley analyst, the ultra-portable model now accounts a 28 percent of the total Apple laptop shipments.

The bigger part of the revolution is how the MacBook Air is driving other computer makers to focus on portability.

At the launch of the fourth-generation model, Apple made a milestone decision to drop the existing MacBook and make the ultra-portable Air as its standard model. Portability became no longer a luxury but the norm.

The first generation model that is 19mm thick and weighed 1.36 kilograms ― wasn’t affordable for ordinary consumers at more than $3,000 while the fourth generation gotten a lot faster with the SSD hard disk drive (HDD) and slimmer by 2mm with the price slashed nearly in half.

“At present, laptop manufacturers expect the portion of ultra-slim laptops at five percent of total portable computer sales, but technology is increasingly focusing on the ultra-thin product in the long run,” Park of Enuri said.

For example, Samsung Electronics tends to be an early adopter of the trend set by Apple and brought out in September the ultra-thin “Series 9” laptops that is 16mm thick and weighs 1.31 kilograms.

The model, which uses an Intel Sandy Bridge processor, a SSD HDD and a back-lit keyboard like the MacBook Air does, is now the best selling laptop in Korea.

Such movement is similar to Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy S smart phone and its eventual rise to rank the world’s largest smartphone maker.

LG Electronics also unveiled in August a sleek “XNOTE” laptop that is 21mm thick and weighs 1.3 kilograms. Its minimal design is clearly a reminder of the silver-colored MacBook Pro or the no longer made MacBook.

Apple is, however, quite a bit away from dominating the laptop market like the iPhone does.

While the App Store as the first of its kind conquered the market, the local personal computer sector is dominated by the Windows operating system. Most domestic software including security programs and websites are tailored to Windows.

In a country where the size of the online shopping market grew to 34.3 trillion won last year, Mac users cannot make online payments or banking transactions because the websites’ security programs aren’t compatible with Apple’s operating system _ most recently the OS X Lion.

For students like Park, online lectures provided by universities simply wouldn’t open on the Mac.

Recent iPhone users do not experience such the trouble because major banks and online vendors created applications tailored to the smartphone’s operating system.

The OS X Lion comes with the launchpad on which users can download various apps while many opt to download a Windows OS and switch back and forth. Korean users still find it inconvenient to move around different platforms.

“Those who just buy a MacBook Air for design, especially female consumers, regret their decision because they find it difficult to get used to Apple’s operating system,” Park of Enuri said.

Furthermore, in the process of slimming down the MacBook Air, Apple took out a few hardware options such as an optical disc drive and an Ethernet adapter. Consumers who need them must buy them by spending extra _ the “SuperDrive” costs 95,000 won and a USB Ethernet adapter is 33,000 won.

“Most MacBook Air buyers know that they have to compromise speed for size, but when it comes to hardware, some of them end up paying a lot of money to buy accessories,” the a#shop clerk said.

The after-sales service policy also remains controversial _ Apple received a great deal of complaints for replacing faulty phones with refurbished devices, not a brand-new one.

While major laptop manufacturers provide the premium services of engineers visiting users’ home to fix the portable devices as standard, Apple does it for only the owners of the iMac desktops.

Despite the odds, those who used a MacBook Air tend to stay loyal. Park Soo-jin is satisfied with her gadget for its “fantastically working” mouse pad, short cut keys and the four different desktops working simultaneously.

“All the laptops I have used so far were just an extension of a desktop. But the MacBook Air is a real ‘laptop,’” Park said.