That Computer Is So You

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"If you're not a player in consumer these days, you're not a player," says Roger L. Kay, president of market researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Just as the auto industry strives to create a car for every type of driver, PC models are being designed to appeal to specific kinds of people. Notable niches include young men with gaming machines, soccer moms with touch-screen models that sit shoulder-to-shoulder with kitchen appliances, and teenage girls with cute, pink, leather-clad laptops. "We're entering the age of style because we have multiple PCs in our households. So you no longer have one white box that serves every function for every person in the household," says J.P. Gownder, a Forrester Research (FORR) analyst.

Designs That Target a Limited Audience

ASUSTeK Computer has taken the automobile analogy to its logical conclusion, producing a laptop specifically for racing fans. Its Lamborghini VX2 notebooks, with their shiny black or yellow covers and Lamborghini logos, even make vroom-vroom engine sounds when they boot up. The price: up to $3,300.

Tulip's notebooks may be the ultimate fashion accessory. Some of its Ego Lifestyle Limited Edition line "handbag" models are encrusted with jewels. "This is for people who drive the Bentley and buy the Gucci bag," says Dmitry Prut, owner of Avant Gallery, a shop in Miami's South Beach that began offering the Egos two weeks ago and has already written up three orders. The limited-edition models range in price from $7,500 to $50,000. For $50,000, you get real diamonds.

A few of the new machines hitting the market are clearly intended to capture some of Apple's design magic. But while most of Apple's designs seem aimed at that young, artsy slacker it features in its clever TV commercials, Apple's approach isn't about targeting hipsters, says Donald A. Norman, a professor at Northwestern University and author of The Design of Future Things. Rather, the company's design genius lies in its dedication to making simple, elegant devices for specific activities, not demographic types, he says. Its early markets were learning and publishing; now they're creativity and entertainment. "The proper way to design is not to target an individual type of customer. You want 100 million customers," says Norman.

Betting on Consumers' Willingness to Pay a Premium

A $50,000 price tag shrinks the potential customer base for a PC considerably. But people appear willing to pay a premium for a machine that tickles their fancy. In a 2007 survey by Forrester, consumers signaled they'd pay an average of $204 more for a high-end laptop that's well designed and $253 more for a high-end desktop.

Lenovo is so sure good design will help it fetch a premium price that it's skipping right over the bottom half of the PC market with its new consumer laptops. It will charge up to $2,000 for some versions of its IdeaPad U110, an 11-inch-wide, 2.3-pound notebook with a bright red top and a high-sheen display screen that runs right to the edge of the lid. The U110 also features a vine-like texture on the surface of its metal cover.

Gownder, of Forrester, says that kind of embellishment seems better suited to Chinese tastes than to the U.S. consumer. But Yao Yingjia, executive director of the Lenovo Innovation Design Center in Beijing, whose team designed the new PCs, says: "You have to take some risks."

Retailers Resistant to New Approaches

Now that PC makers have designed a wide range of flashy machines, the battle is spreading to the shelves of stores. Sony (SNE) has convinced a few retailers that specialize in TVs and audio equipment to stock its Vaio LT, a computer tucked behind a flat-panel, high-def, wall-mountable screen. HP would love to see its TouchSmart PC, a touch-screen model for the kitchen, displayed alongside microwaves and refrigerators.

But by and large, retailers haven't been that adventurous. They're confining PCs to the computer aisles. "We still have a long way to go," says Satjiv S. Chahil, senior vice-president for global marketing for HP's Personal Systems Group. "When you go to retail, they are still displayed in the old-fashioned ways." That's the next frontier for these new-fashioned PCs.

Hamm is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York. Greene is BusinessWeek's Seattle bureau chief.