A new ultra-thin laptop expected to be unveiled by HP tomorrow is aimed at outperforming Apple in innovation, according to news reports published yesterday. Set to make its debut at the New York Times' International Luxury Conference in Paris, the HP Spectre will be less than 11 millimeters thick and sport a 13.3-inch display, making it thinner than the 12-inch Apple MacBook. Launched in March 2015, the 13.1-millimeter MacBook has been Apple's thinnest laptop to date. For the moment, HP isn't saying much more about the Spectre beyond what was reported yesterday in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. HP spokesperson Mike Hockey told us the company will release details about the new laptop at 6:30 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow. Demand for Innovation, Premium Systems Makers of traditional laptops are looking for new directions as the market continues to shift dramatically. The ever-increasing computing power of smartphones, which have also grown in screen size to resemble mini-tablets, have helped to drive down sales numbers for PCs for some time now. Global PC shipments declined 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, compared to the same period in 2014, according to IDC's most recent Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, released in January. For the year, PC shipments fell below 300 million units for the first time since 2008, IDC said. While that market is led by Lenovo, HP and Dell, Apple has now tied with fourth place Asus in PC sales, according to IDC's figures. "Even as mainstream desktop and notebooks see their lifetimes stretched ever longer, Apple's emergence as a top 5 global PC vendor in 2015 shows that there can be strong demand for innovative, even premium-priced systems that put user experience first," IDC research manager Jay Chou noted in a statement released with the most recent Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Luxury Spectre Features Gold, Diamonds "Devices like PCs, tablets and smartphones are still growing, but they are also shifting," HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler told the New York Times yesterday. That shift is creating an opportunity for companies like HP to "create new categories," he added. Weisler demonstrated the Spectre's new approach by showing how the ultra-thin device could fit inside an older HP laptop, which itself could be nested inside a thicker laptop that had been state of the art in 2012. "If you focus on building for the high end, your other devices get better, too," Weisler told the New York Times. The Spectre, "underlines the lengths to which PC makers must now go to attract customer attention," the New York Times noted. In fact, in keeping with the luxury theme of tomorrow's event in Paris, HP has produced "a small number of the new slim laptops in gold and diamonds, to be sold for $25,000 each for charity," according to the report. Source: Top Tech News
