NEW DELHI: Lenovo, a provider in IT services, 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.

Lenovo is offering ThinkPad X100e, luanched in this category , at starting price of Rs. 29950. All the Thinkpad Edge series are 802.11n enabled to support high wi-fi speed up to 54 mbps. This series will have optional bluetooth as well as 3G connectivity.

With increase focus on Small and Medium Buisness in India, Lenovo will increase its point of contacts with SMB from 375 to 1000 by the end of this calendar year.

"We have between 2-3 per cent market share in SMB space. Hence there is lot of opportunity for us to play in this space. We will increase out points of presence from 375 to 1000 in this year," said Amar Babu R.K., managing director, Lenovo India at the launch of new Think Pad Edge series laptops for SMB segment.

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.

Built around choice of AMD Turion and Athlon New dual core processors on Windows 7 starter edition, the Thinkpad Edge series starts at Rs. 34 thousand. This series will be also available on Intel Core2 Duo ultra low voltage and standard dual core processor but the exact price has not been yet decided.

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.

Amar Babu further added that the ThinkPad brand gives them the leverage to reach out to the premium SMB customers. Now, with the new ThinkPad Edge Series and the ThinkPad X100e, they are targeting the mainstream segment in SMB as well.

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,” said Alex Li, vice president, Transaction Sales, Lenovo.

He added, “ 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.”