Dell drops ultrathin Adamo 13 to $899
A lower-priced Adamo 13 has popped up on Dell's Web site. The Adamo page is now showing the price of the aluminum-clad ultrathin laptop at $899—and this discount comes with an unexpected bonus, too. — The Adamo is a slick …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Adamo arrived in early 2009 as Dell's statement piece — so much a priority that Dell had to buy the adamo.com domain after launch — and it spent its first year as the company's premium halo laptop. Through late 2009 Dell paired it with the far cheaper Vostro V13, covering both ends of the thin-and-light market.
This holiday-week cut to $899 on Dell's own site moves the aluminum flagship down toward that budget tier. It also lands amid a busy Dell consumer stretch — the Venue Pro orders, the unlocked Streak, and the $549 Inspiron Duo convertible all shipped in November and December — suggesting the company is pushing hard on price across its consumer line heading into 2011.
First-order effects
- Holiday shoppers get a previously premium-positioned aluminum ultrathin at $899 directly from Dell, with the site listing an additional bonus bundled into the deal.
- Dell effectively repositions Adamo 13 from halo product to midprice competitor, narrowing its own gap to the Vostro V13 it launched a year earlier.
Second-order effects
- Rivals selling Windows thin-and-lights above the $1,000 mark face pressure to match the new price floor or concede the sub-$900 premium-chassis segment to Dell this season.
- If the cut reflects slow full-price demand, Dell's channel partners are left holding inventory whose street value just moved beneath their cost of acquisition.
Third-order effects
- A sustained slide of designer ultraportables under $1,000 would collapse 'premium thin' into mainstream pricing, forcing PC makers to compete on internals and service rather than chassis prestige.
- Vendors that keep halo lines alive mainly for brand value will increasingly have to decide whether to subsidize them or retire them once they can no longer command premium margins.
The trend: Premium ultraportable pricing is eroding toward the mainstream as PC vendors trade margin for holiday volume in the thin-and-light category.