Lenovo rolls out SMB strategy in India

New Delhi: Lenovo has announced an aggressive business strategy to pursue the significant growth opportunity in the SMB segment in India's PC market. After having sold over 51 million ThinkPad PCs globally, Lenovo now extends the ThinkPad for SMB users through its 'ThinkPad Edge series' laptops.

The company 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. Lenovo has 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.

“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, MD, 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 percent 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, VP-Transaction Sales, Lenovo.