Lenovo is moving away from its business origins with the launch of a new consumer oriented PC line, dubbed the "Idea" range, later this month.
The PC maker is hoping a foothold in the consumer market will give its business PCs a boost: "As many consumers trust the brand of PC they use at home for their work, there are additional opportunities to leverage our brand in the consumer market with the commercial side of the business," David Nicol, director of small business and consumer products in ANZ, said.
Lenovo's move may also be driven by the strong growth in the global consumer PC market: industry analyst Gartner projects that the global home PC market will grow by 12.7 percent between 2006 and 2011, compared with a 10.7 percent increase in the global business PC market over the same period.
The Y710 laptop.
Lenovo's Idea range will include "IdeaPad" notebooks and "IdeaCentre" desktops. The first two IdeaPads will be the 17-inch Y710 and the 15.4-inch Y510. The Ideapads will include facial recognition, Dolby Home Theatre surround sound and dedicated gaming controls.
The IdeaCentre desktops, of which K200 and Q200 desktops will be available in Australia, will include features such as data recovery, facial recognition and antibacterial keyboards.
Lenovo will be joining an already crowded and competitive Australian market, competing with leaders HP, Acer and Dell.
Nicol said Lenovo's move was motivated by the "tremendous opportunity [we know] exists untapped in the consumer market for Lenovo", as "consumer notebook growth is expected to increase 25 percent [according to IDC], in the first quarter of 2008".
According to Gartner, HP and Acer are currently the Australian consumer market leaders who, between them, account for more than half of the total PCs shipped from Q1 through to Q3 2007. Gartner also notes that Australia is currently "the second-most-penetrated professional PC market in the world".
The K200 desktop.
Nicol added: "This is a space we currently do not do business in outside of China. We expect shipments of our consumer PCs to contribute a significant amount to our total number of PC shipments over the long term."
