Lenovo: Focusing on the SMB segment Date:   Thursday , January 06, 2011 How big do you hope will be the Mobile PC market for Lenovo in India? The mobile PC segment is one of the fast growing segments in India. As per IDC’s India Quarterly PC market tracker, November 2010 release, the sales of Notebook computers grew at 52 percent year-on-year (July-September 2010 over July-September 2009), to cross 11.1 lakh units for the quarter. With the revival of growth in the economy and sustained consumer confidence, more consumers are purchasing PCs in India than ever before. Lenovo has worked persistently in streamlining operations, driving down costs and improving time-to-market. Our fine tuned focus on the young Indian consumer is a concrete step forward to help us achieve steady growth in the consumer and SMB segment. How strong has been the SME penetration? Lenovo addresses multiple market segments with its wide range of products and SME is certainly a high growth segment for us. Lenovo introduced variety of products for the SME segment early this year – of these, the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge laptops, our flagship SME products, have been positioned as the ultimate business tool for SMEs. Our Lenovo ThinkPad X100e is a pioneering product in the industry as it offers ultra portability and the ThinkPad brand promise at an entry-level price point. Lenovo B460 is a splendid business series laptop with excellent features aimed at providing high-performance. Lenovo V460 is a high-feature, high-design super-slim machine. It is an enviable piece of technology, providing everything that an SMB customer can ask for. Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z all-in-one PC that is ideal for the small and medium businesses, is also one of the most ‘green’ products in the market. We are bullish on the Indian SME market and are committed to enhance our market share in this space. We have streamlined our business models by replicating best practices from our global and emerging markets’ experience. What are the challenges and competition you see in the market? The Indian consumer has become more discerning today, given the varied options in the market today, consumers are price-sensitive / value- conscious and at the same time unwilling to compromise on product quality and features. By constantly studying market dynamics and evolving consumer requirements, Lenovo is effectively addressing the requirements of PC users across the world. On a habitual basis, Lenovo has launched innovative and award-winning products for customers, with intent to deliver affordable innovation across a wide range of products. Give an insight into you recent expansion of retail presence across India. Currently, we have 120 plus Lenovo Exclusive Stores (LES) across India. We are now focusing on improving the profitability of our existing LES. To increase our retail footprint in tier 3-5 cities in India, we have embarked on a major retail expansion with our LES Lite stores – these are a smaller format of our LES. Buoyed by our ‘Get closer to customers’ strategy, we are aiming to achieve stronger partnerships with our business partners and bring higher quality retail experience. Our aim is to have close to 400 LES Lite stores across key tier 3-5 cities in India by the end of FY 2010-11. We will continue to keep enhancing the quality of our customer service and open more service centers in different parts of the country in due course of time. What are your future plans? As a company, we want to drive consistent product innovation, understand the pulse of our customers and develop game changing products that give us a competitive edge in the market place. Lenovo has a clear roadmap for India. Our aim is to drive better efficiency, expand our product portfolio and increase partner profitability – while ensuring that our customers get nothing but the best. We will continue our strategic investment in key growth markets, especially tier 3 -5 cities. With our winning suite of products and strong channel partnerships, we expect to achieve incremental growth in the coming months.