Now that the leadership of Lenovo is back in the hands of Chinese executives, the PC maker says it plans to pay more attention to its home market of China and other emerging markets, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
It cut ties with its American CEO Bill Amelio earlier this week after a dreadful financial quarter in which the company lost $97 million. Chairman Yan Yuanqing has taken over as chief executive and company co-founder Liu Chuanzhi is returning to become chairman of the board.
Liu blames the company's current woes on the worldwide financial crisis and Lenovo's heavy investment in the commercial computing space with long lists of corporate customers. Though the company has made huge strides to become the fourth-largest PC maker by volume in the world, its presence in the consumer market outside China has been minimal until recently. A year ago the company introduced a line of consumer laptops and desktops, and more recently, a Netbook.
Now Lenovo will renew its focus in its home market and emerging markets to include individual and smaller businesses customers, Liu told the Journal.
The company will remain an international company and plans to keep its dual headquarters in Beijing and Morrisville, N.C., according to Liu. But what's unclear is what this means for the company's nascent consumer business.
As promised, Dell unveiled several new computers Wednesday made specifically for emerging PC markets like China and India.
There are four new models in all under the Vostro line--two laptops and two desktops. The notebooks will start at $475, and the desktops at $440, and will be available in more than 20 countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
New Vostro notebooks from Dell made for emerging markets.
(Credit: Dell)The notebooks are available in 14.1-inch and 15.6-inch sizes, and come with Intel Celeron or Core2Duo processors, and Ubuntu Linux or Windows Vista. The desktops come with Intel Atom, Celeron, or Pentium processors, and Ubuntu or Vista.
Dell says there will be more Vostro products for these markets released in the next few months.
This looks to be the beginning of the company's promised push into two of the fastest-growing PC markets in the world. After establishing a retail presence in both China and India in the last year, Michael Dell said in March that while growth in the U.S. market for PCs would be "OK," Asian markets would grow more.
Dell has traditionally derived the majority of its business here in the U.S., but for the first time ever its international business ticked above 50 percent of the company's total last quarter.
But looking abroad for a boost is a strategy that Dell's not alone in pursuing. Chief rival Hewlett-Packard has been doing a bang-up business for a while now in China, which is the home turf of another PC heavyweight, Lenovo.
We'll see Thursday how effective the retail push into Asia has been for Dell, when it's due to report its second-quarter earnings.
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