Digital Nomads

Dell has unveiled a new range of laptops aimed squarely at digital nomads. Speaking to BBC News, Andy Lark – Dell’s VP for Global Marketing – claims that more than two-thirds of India’s workforce is going to be entirely mobile.

With the majority of people buying their PCs online coming from emerging economies like India, it is no wonder that Dell is focussing on features that are being demanded by the footloose mobile worker. These include things like long battery life, easy connectivity, robust security, reliability and, above all, supreme portability.

Dell is wise to focus on mobility, but whether its revamped laptops are enough to stem its recent loss in market share remains to be seen. All the major PC makes from Apple to Toshiba are continually pushing the envelope on battery life and weights of their laptops.

I believe the real “game-changer” in the mobility space is the maturing of the cloud computing and web services concepts. The true digital nomads of tomorrow are those who do not need to lug their computing hardware around with them, regardless of how light it may be. Instead, their data, applications and processes live on the Web and are accessible practically anywhere through far tinnier devices that are not much larger than smart-phones.

An Economist article – “Nomads at last (April 2008)” – paints a far more compelling picture of how wireless communication can turn us into true nomads, sans most of the hardware.