Computers News
- Lenovo to expand consumer market
Date: 11-Sep-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
LENOVO Group Ltd., Asia's biggest maker of personal computers, will sell laptops to consumers in the United States to challenge Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc.
The company will also sell the Lenovo-brand laptops to individuals in France, Russia and South Africa starting January, chairman Yang Yuanqing said Saturday in Dalian, northeastern China.
Desktop computers will be sold to individuals in these countries from March or April, Yang said.
Lenovo lags behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell of the United States in the consumer market, which is growing three times as fast as corporate sales, IDC estimates.
The company, which mostly sells to businesses outside its largest market China, is vying with Acer Inc. to buy Packard Bell NV and expand in Europe, its first purchase since acquiring International Business Machines Corp.'s PC unit in 2005.
'The consumer market will be the main driver in the next few years,'' Yang said. 'We have almost no consumer market overseas now, and hope to expand that to about the same as for China.''
In the United States, the computers will likely be sold at Office Depot Inc. and Circuit City Stores Inc. outlets, said Yang, who also heads the consumer PC division set up in April.
Lenovo leads in China's market for desktop computers and notebooks with a 35.8 percent share, said Bryan Ma, an analyst at IDC. Hewlett-Packard is second with 13.4 percent, followed by Shanghai-based Founder Technology Group Corp. with 12 percent and Round Rock, Texas-based Dell with 8.1 percent.
Lenovo, which moved its headquarters to Raleigh, North Carolina, after the IBM purchase, began sales of its own-branded models to small and medium-sized businesses in February 2006. As part of the acquisition, Lenovo is allowed to use the IBM brand name until 2010.
'It's not an easy task going to the consumer markets , especially in the United States, where the Lenovo brand isn't well known and consumers are more brand-conscious,'' said Charles Guo, an analyst at JP Morgan in Hong Kong.
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