iTWire - HP unveils $299 thin client

HP unveils $299 thin client

By Beverley Head
Wednesday, 18 November 2009 12:15

HP has refreshed its thin client range, adding a $299 entry level model which it considers its “silver bullet” – seemingly unconcerned at the risk of cannibalising its PC sales.

Spurred by continued enterprise interest in virtualisation, the company believes demand for thin clients will continue to grow strongly while PC sales languish. It claims IDC figures for the second quarter of the year show it held 58 per cent of the local thin client market, with Wyse a distant second.

Five years ago HP held just 10 per cent of the thin client market which IDC estimates is currently around 78,000 units a year in Australia.

Claiming that users were increasingly interested in thin clients which typically required a third of the support that PCs demanded, and consumed up to 80 percent less energy, the company also launched its first Intel based high end thin client.

Robert Kingston, product marketing manager also suggested that while the typical life of a PC might be 3-4 years, a thin client which has no hard drive could run for 5-10 years and typically lasted 40 per cent longer than a PC.

Allen Tiffany, ISV Alliances and Field Enablement Manager, who was in Sydney to launch the devices, acknowledged the apparent sales crossover between PC sales and thin client sales but said the devices had been developed in response to customer demand. “In HP we do not spend much time worrying whether they will cannibalise PC sales. The PC will be the bulk of sales for some time to come.”

Early demand for thin clients in Australia has come from the health, local government and education sectors according to Kingston. He said demand was growing by around 13 per cent a year compared to 1 per cent for standard desktops.

Jean-Marc Annonier, program manager for IT spending at analyst IDC, said that he expected continued double digit growth for thin clients adding that “HP had no other choice but to be on this journey.”

Tiffany added; “Do we think thin clients are going to take over and desktops go away? No. Our objective is that it’s an HP badged product whatever they want.”

The entry level model is the HP t5325 Essential Series Thin Client. The top end machine is the HP t5740 Flexible Series Thin Client based on Intel Atom N280 processors.

All new thin clients also come with HP set-up wizards to help with configuration.