|
Vinita Bhatia
MUMBAI: Not many know that Lenovo, which took over the IBM brand of laptops and desktops over a year and half ago, has its own range of cellphones. And looks like Lenovo India would like to keep it that way.
Chinese firm Lenovo entered the cellphone market with the i921 PDA cell phone that runs Window Mobile 5.0. But this product was launched in China and the company has limited its cell phone business only to its origin country.
Less than six months ago, Lenovo Mobile set up a new phone production base in Xiamen in China to achieve its goal of seizing 10 per cent of the market share in that country. Its aim is to be one of the top three mobile phone manufacturers in China by the end of this year.
Bill Amelio, CEO of Lenovo, had announced at the opening of the plant, that the new production base would produce 15 million to 30 million mobile phones each year. This new base is also capable of making 3G mobile phones.
This is all very good. But why is the IT major not bringing its cell phones to India, one of the fastest growing telecom market in the APAC region?
Vivek Malhotra, director - Relationship Business, South Asia of Lenovo, India, considers such a move is likely within the next year, though no decision in the regard was taken at the top management level.
After the IBM buyout, Lenovo has become the third largest PC brand in the world, after Dell and HP. It has embarked on an advertising blitzkrieg to promote its newly acquired range of desktops and laptops. It would have been easy for the company to ride on this advertising wave to evangelize its mobile phone offerings as well. But the company seems to be slow on the uptake.
Malhotra notes that there could be one reason for the managementfs decision to take time into entering the Indian telecom market. gSelling this product means setting up of a totally new channel and delivery mode. Right now, our focus is on our laptops and desktops, which is probably why the management is not willing to dive into the mobile market immediately.
|
