Lenovo rolls out SMB strategy in India

Company Brief

New Delhi January 22, 2010

Lenovo today announced an aggressive business strategy to pursue the significant growth opportunity in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment in India's PC market. After having sold over 51 million ThinkPad PCs globally and establishing it as an ultimate business tool, Lenovo now extends the ThinkPad brand promise to SMB users through its "ThinkPad Edge Series" laptops, which combine the solid reliability of the ThinkPad with style and affordability. It also declared its go-to-market strategy for the SMB segment in India, focusing on Value Added Resellers (VAR), System Integrators (SI) and Retail, covering 150 cities initially.

In another first, Lenovo extended the New Year cheer to business users with the "ThinkPad X100e", identifying an opportunity in a whole new category of entry-level, ultraportable laptops designed for business users. Together, Lenovo's new ThinkPad products signify the company's intent to offer exceptionally engineered PCs and herald the new decade on a positive note for business users.

"After fortifying our leadership position in the large enterprise PC segment and building our presence in the consumer PC segment, we are now expanding the scope of growth in our India business with our renewed strategy for the important SMB segment", said Amar Babu, Managing Director, Lenovo India. "As a recognized leader in business computing, the ThinkPad brand gives us the leverage to reach out to the premium SMB customers. Now, with the new ThinkPad Edge Series and the ThinkPad X100e, we are targeting the mainstream segment in SMB as well", he added.

The SMB segment offers one of the most significant opportunities in India's PC market. According to IDC, the SMB PC spending in India was estimated to be Rs. 5,275 crore in 2009 and is expected to touch Rs. 5,515 crore in 2010. As per IDC, PC spends accounted for 30.74 per cent of the total spends on IT by SMBs in India in 2009, with total SMB IT spending estimated to be Rs. 17,160 crore. An SMB enterprise is defined as an organization that employs between 1 to 499 workers.

As per Lenovo's market understanding an SMB user is cost sensitive, expects quality and reliability in his PC, values the product features and cares about PC aesthetics.

"Our strategy for the SMB segment aims at closing the gap between the ThinkPad and the SMB users. We understand that SMB customers want PCs with bold, sleek, professional designs, simplistic experience and reliable tools, yet fitting within their budgets. The ThinkPad Edge Series is designed keeping all these needs in mind. We see a hyper growth opportunity in this space", said Alex Li, Vice President, Transaction Sales, Lenovo.

ThinkPad Edge Series: SMB Performance Gets New "Edge"

SMBs "are a 24 x 7 business," and their PC technology reflects their personal brand. The ThinkPad Edge Series laptops reflect a new progressive and strikingly clean appearance while retaining ThinkPad durability and reliability. For example, the laptops include spill-resistant keyboards and value-added ThinkVantage Technologies like the Active Protection System and Rescue and Recovery. They also blend expressive design and ease of use in the form of:

* Contemporary Keyboard – A new contemporary keyboard gives the laptop a clean and inviting look. Uniform black keys and removal of the embedded number pad also help create a modern design. The Function keys have even been re-designed so that users only need to use one finger to access multimedia functions and more. Other rarely used keys like System Request have been removed. Additionally, select models of the ThinkPad Edge 14 and 15 inch versions will come with illuminated keyboards for visibility in low light conditions while adding a touch of elegance to the keyboard.

* Expanded Touchpad – A large multi-touch touchpad provides an oversized landing pad for fingers to pinch, zoom and scroll.

* Expressive, Colorful Palette – Midnight glossy or midnight soft black remain the traditional color for business. Additionally, a sleek silver band frames the exterior of the laptop.

The ThinkPad Edge Series, starting at Rs.34,000/- with the Windows 7 starter edition makes it an attractive investment for SMBs.

ThinkPad X100e: Entry-Level Ultraportable ThinkPad Creating New Category for Business Computing

The ThinkPad X100e is Lenovo's first professional-grade ultraportable laptop. It successfully bridges the gap between netbooks and laptops, giving users business grade performance built into a highly usable and mobile device. This is also the first time Lenovo and AMD have collaborated to offer AMD processors on ThinkPad laptops and to leverage AMD's VisionPro branding.

The ultraportable ThinkPad X100e starts at an attractive of Rs. 29,950/- with the Windows 7 starter edition, making it a milestone product in the PC industry, and an ideal buy for mid-level executives, who want laptops that offer extreme portability and reliable business computing tools without the expense. The ThinkPad X100e, designed for usability, highly mobile and offering a professional-grade performance, is ideal for users in large enterprises in BFSI, telecom, healthcare verticals, and government, education and SMB segments.

For further information, please contact:

Text 100 Public Relations

Ekta Dokania

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Email: ekta.dokania@text100.co.in