Apple is core to school reselling at Queensland Computers

We speak with Queensland Computers managing director Geoffrey Augutis

What laptop and hybrid brands do you specialise in?

Sales is only one portion of what we do. In terms of the supply of laptops and computers, we are definitely bigger with Apple than we are with any other vendor. We do sell a bit of the Microsoft Surface range and we also have a fairly strong presence around Lenovo and HP.

When did your company first get involved in this area?

We opened our doors in 2005 and over the years have changed our business model. Primarily we were a retail store and then we transitioned into managed IT, but we do still operate in the retail space.

What are your credentials in this area?

We are an Apple authorised service centre. As well as that we are Apple education authorised, with our technicians and consultants registered under the Apple consultants’ network.

Which distributors do you use?

Our main distributors would be Ingram Micro and Dicker Data. We also deal with Synnex.

Heard about any cool developments in this space recently?

For us the big move is businesses and corporates being able to use hybrids as a functional device. We found early-stage hybrids were a consumer device and we're now finding a lot of people are using tablets and hybrids to replace, rather than accompany, their existing device. The fully fledged-functionality tablets and hybrids we have access to now are pretty exciting.

Can you tell us about a recent deployment you’ve done?

Most of the large deployments we do in this market are in the education sector. We have a number of deployments where we've rolled out iPads to schools and government. We also deploy MacBooks in these scenarios, depending on the clients’ wants and needs. We find these student and teacher devices replace many of their traditional teaching and learning tools.

What is driving sales in laptops and hybrids?

Particularly with the deployments we work on, it’s the transformation of battery life, where you get a full day of use now. A lot of customers are making that their main prerequisite when they approach us. People don't want to have to drag power packs around with them.

Laptops and hybrids are…?

An important part of growth for our business.