Lenovo has eyes on consumer PC market
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Chinese PC maker unveils a line of consumer-focused notebooks, but this might not be the best time for it to be making such a market leap.Lenovo's IdeaPad notebooks
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By Frank Norton and Anne Krishnan, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  May 30--Lenovo, which is trying to increase sales of its computers to consumers and small businesses, is teaming with IBM to roll out a new technical support service for those customers.
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The Lenovo 3000 Y410 is available at retail outlets.
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Lenovo has launched a widescreen version of its ThinkPad line of notebook PCs, bidding to compete with Dell for business users.
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The computer-hardware giant, best known for products such as PCs and printers, on Friday laid out its plan to become a brand-name in consumer electronics products such as flat-screen TVs, music players and the devices that move content between them.
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Perhaps it isn't quite as surprising as if Ford MotorÂ Co. suddenly decided to sell the Mustang sports car brand to Hyundai. But IBM's decision to sell its PC business to China's Lenovo Group underscores the challenges that manufacturers face in the modern PC business, even for a company synonymous with the product.
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IBM's decision to sell its PC business to China's Lenovo Group Ltd. underscores the challenges manufacturers face in the modern PC business, even for a company synonymous with the product.
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Continued criticism by industry insiders didn&#39;t stop vendors from OQO to Lenovo and LG from showing off ultramobile PC products with range of innovative features at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas this week.With many of the prototypes displayed due to hit the market later this year, UMPCs continue to be panned for their inconvenient keyboards, small screen sizes, and poor battery life ever, since the first UMPC from OQO was introduced at CES in 2004.OQO showed off a WiMax-capable OQO Model 2 UMPC, powered by Via Technologies&#39; C7-M mobile processors and running Windows Vista OS. It comes with hard-drive or flash-based solid-state drive options, supports up to 1GB of RAM, and has a sliding display that pops up to show a keyboard. Weighing around 1 pound (453 grams), prices start at $1,299.Eyes were locked on UMPC prototypes from companies including Lenovo and Founder at Intel&#39;s booth. The Lenovo device includes the Linux OS from Chinese developer Red Flag Software, and boasts a 4.8-inch touchscreen, an onboard camera, and other features. The Founder Mini-Note features a 7-inch screen, a 60GB hard drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking, and weighs around 800 grams.Intel&#39;s prototypes are based on its Menlow platform, a code name given to a set of Intel chips for ultramobile PCs due out next year. Menlow will include a new low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, and a chip set code-named Poulsbo.One prototype that may never ship is a slider UMPC displayed in LG&#39;s booth, also based on the Menlow platform. The device runs Windows Vista, comes with a 4.8-inch screen, 1GB of memory, a 40GB hard disk drive, a touchscreen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3G HSDPA cellular data. A representative at the LG booth said the company had not decided whether to market the device, as it suffered from poor battery life and keyboard usage issues.UMPCs create a design challenge by virtue of being a tweener -- neither a cell phone nor a laptop, said Phil McKinney , vice president and chief technology officer at HP&#39;s personal systems group. &quot;The UMPCs -- OQO and those guys -- are trying to be too much on the small side, very heavy, not great battery life, they get hot in your hand too when you use it. But when you get north of 9-inch screens, you&#39;re getting pretty close to a laptop,&quot; McKinney said.Screens up to 7 inches are not an appropriate scale for use of screen for touch-based applications, McKinney said.UMPCs have floundered around for a while as a killer application for mobile devices hasn&#39;t been discovered yet, McKinney said. &quot;There&#39;s a lot of people coming out with products, I don&#39;t think anybody&#39;s found what the killer application or what that killer use case model really is,&quot; McKinney said.Alp Sezen, a sales director for Via Technologies based in Fremont, California, said that a reason UMPC sales have not increased dramatically, at least in the U.S., is that wireless bandwidth for mobile devices up to now has been slow.&quot;The biggest problem with ultramobile devices is they need more bandwidth. When the user experience for mobile wireless is better, that&#39;s when you will see ultramobile devices really take off,&quot; Sezen said. &quot;Right now you typically get 116K [bits per second] when you are mobile, which isn&#39;t a great user experience.&quot; A true ultramobile experience is the ability to pull out a mobile device and easily surf the Web. &quot;Right now, you can&#39;t get that experience,&quot; Sezen said.It will take a year or two for the mobile wireless experience to get better, Sezen said. &quot;WiMax, and the opening up of Verizon&#39;s EV-DO network in the third quarter this year will help give a better experience for ultramobile users.&quot;Intel has categorized UMPCs under the Mobile Internet Device (MID) nomenclature, and segments the devices further based on applications like entertainment, productivity and navigation, said Pankaj Kedia, director of the global ecosystem program for mobile Internet and UMPC platforms. The look and feel of devices, the marketing technique and what users want to buy is different, Kedia said.Clarion&#39;s UMPC, for example, will be marketed as a next-generation navigation device, Kedia said. &quot;It might have the capability of a PC under the hood, but from a user perspective it is a portable navigation mobile Internet device,&quot; Kedia said. UMPCs are more like MIDs aimed at productivity with PC capabilities inside.When asked if a prototype UMPC that Qualcomm showed off at CES would replace cell phones, company chief technology officer Sanjay Jha thought for a second and then replied: &quot;I don&#39;t know.&quot;Different people might use them in different ways, Jha said. Also, how consumers use UMPCs might depend on how successful Bluetooth becomes, he said. Some consumers might be happy to use a UMPC instead of a cell phone if they can use a Bluetooth headset to make and receive voice calls, rather than holding the larger device up to their ears, he said.Fujitsu&#39;s Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product marketing, also didn&#39;t have a definitive description of the ideal UMPC user. Someone who works on their feet a lot and is OK with typing with their thumbs might be an ideal user, he said. But he said the UMPC wouldn&#39;t necessarily replace a laptop.Terminology doesn&#39;t matter though, HP&#39;s McKinney said. &quot;Let a marketing person loose for 10 minutes and they&#39;ll come up with a category. You can say UMPC or MID, what the hell&#39;s the difference?&quot;(Nancy Gohring, Marc Ferranti, Dan Nystedt, and Martyn Williams contributed to this report).
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard kicked off a push into Japan's consumer PC market on Tuesday after being absent from the space for about four years. "We believe the opportunity is right," said Takafumi Oka, president of Hewlett-Packard Japan at a Tokyo news conference. "This will be an important milestone in our history." On Tuesday the company launched three new desktops and a laptop. It began marketing laptop PCs to consumers about six months ago, but the launch represents the start of a more serious attack on the home turf of local market leaders like Fujitsu, NEC, Toshiba, and Sony. HP is focusing its efforts on a direct sales model through the Internet and telephone. Additionally it will open three mini-stores inside major electronics shops in Tokyo where prospective customers will be able to try out the PCs, talk with HP representatives and place orders. Two of the stores will open on Wednesday and the third on Friday. HP's machines will be offered built-to-order and produced at an existing HP factory in Tokyo. That makes Japan the first market outside of the U.S. to have a local assembly plant for custom-ordered PCs, said Junichi Yamashita, who heads HP Japan's mobile and consumer business. As a result consumers will be able to get their PCs five days after ordering, he said. HP Japan left the consumer market four years ago after it merged with Compaq and decided to concentrate on enterprise customers in Japan. "The difference this time is that we have a better understanding we hope of the kinds of products you have to deliver to the Japanese market," said Richard Walker, vice president and general manager of HP in an interview with IDG News Service. "Also we're talking a different route to market this time. Previously we tried retail and quite honestly got killed." The direct sales model should make things different this time around, he said. "As I heard the presentation I got the feeling that HP is now getting serious about Japan," said Shunsuke Yoshizawa, head of AMD's Japanese marketing unit, at the news conference. Yoshizawa said Japanese consumers tend to be "very picky" when it comes to buying a PC and putting their trust in a brand. The company wouldn't name a specific goal for its reentry into the consumer market but said it hopes to achieve a double-digit market share. Doing so would make it a major player in the Japan consumer market. In the third quarter of 2006, the latest period for which figures are available, only four PC makers enjoyed a double-digit share of the entire PC market, according to IDC. NEC led the market with a 20.8 percent share, second was Fujitsu at 18.6 percent, third was Dell with a 13.5 percent share and fourth was Toshiba at 10.3 percent.
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IBM's decision to sell its personal computer business to China-based Lenovo gives the world's third-largest nation the distinction of housing what will soon be the world's third-largest PC maker. On a deeper level, the deal also marks a changing of the guard in the PC business and rearranges the game board for rivals Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
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Although virtually unknown in the U.S., Lenovo - in talks to buy I.B.M.'s personal computer business - is China's largest PC maker and the world's fastest growing one.
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Asian computer makers like Acer, Asustek, and Lenovo are aggressively courting U.S. consumers with high-end laptops.
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Lenovo Group Ltd. of China would transform itself into one of the world&#39;s top three computer makers with the purchase of International Business Machines Corp.
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Beleagured company hopes to add a little game power to its PC lineup with its purchase of high-end computer maker.
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By unveiling a new line of stylish laptops ahead of both CES and Macworld, Lenovo stands alone in the limelight today. But is there still room for another large player in the laptop space?
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Lenovo said it will try to win even more U.S. small business customers by selling its laptops at the computer retailer's stores.
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Late Tuesday, IBM announced that it&#39;s selling its PC business to Lenovo Group Limited, the leading PC brand in China. IBM&#39;s current PC business ranks a distant third behind Dell and HP