Lenovo braces for SA penetration

By Kaunda Chama for Lenovo
Johannesburg, 15 Feb 2006

A year after it bought IBM`s PC division, making it one of the world`s biggest PC vendors, Lenovo will for the first time ship its Lenovo-branded products outside China.

Although the launch is scheduled for 24 February, the products will only reach the South African market a week later, says the company.

Rashid Wally, Lenovo`s SA country GM, says unlike IBM, which was enterprise-focused, Lenovo will bring to market products that cater for different market segments.

"Lenovo wants to play across the board and will bring products for the large enterprise, SMEs, SOHOs as well as the home user. For the home user, in addition to notebooks and PCs, we will bring cameras, cellular phones and other handheld devices."

When asked about the possibility of the mobile phone market being overtraded locally, he comments that according to his company`s research, there is still a huge portion of the population that needs cellphones, while existing users now upgrade their phones more frequently.

"To add to this, there is also a huge demand for cellular phones in the rest of Africa," says Wally.

The company has signed an agreement with a local distributor and the Independent Communications Authority of SA has approved four of its handsets.

"In order to make sure we provide quality products across all tiers, we are keeping our strong association with the likes of Microsoft and Intel," notes Wally.

Although he would not reveal any specific projections for the local market, he is confident Lenovo will soon position itself as a technology leader with the help of its channel partners.