Panasonic’s Toughbook range eyes Rs 100 crore revenue with Digital India

Panasonic launched the world’s first fully rugged detachable laptop, Toughbook CF-20 in India on Thursday. With this new launch the company is eyeing Rs 100 crore revenue for the Toughbook portfolio in the country. And with the government’s Digital India campaign, the company is betting big on the government sector and hopes to capture 70% of the India market for rugged laptops/tabs by 2018.

Gunjan Sachdev, National Business Head for Toughbook said “CF-20 is bundled with broad range of configural options, the ability to detach the tablet from notebook provides flexibility, reliability and enterprise-grade features. With CF-20 we are looking at increasing our market share from the existing 60%.” Panasonic has also been one of the oldest players in the segment with their first Toughbook coming out around 20yrs back.

Specifications
Panasonic’s new Toughbook is equipped with the Windows 10 Pro, CF-20 is powered by the sixth generation IntelR Core vPro processor, 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM. And it will cost you Rs. 2.25lac.

Here’s what the portfolio is all about
Rugged laptops/Tablets are devices that are specifically designed to reliably function in harsh conditions. These laptops are engineered to be shock, drop, dust and waterproof. Toughbooks are basically purpose-built for challenging environments, including field services, transport and logistics, healthcare, oil and gas and defense.

Rugged laptops/tabs globally sell 2milliom units and Panasonic captures 60% market share globally. However the demand for rugged laptops is ruled majorly by two countries, US and Europe. For Panasonic these two markets make up 70-80% of their total global sales. India comes in the leftover 20% along with many other countries including China, Japan. Other Players for rugged laptops include Dell, Lenovo, Getac and there has been a growing interest in India for the portfolio. With the kind of specification and pricing, this product is mainly a B2B product.
And Panasonic is betting big on Digital India to pump up huge sales for Toughbook, it is hoping to up the Toughbook sales to the government to a 60%(from the current 40%) in the next 2-3yrs.