The company that brands its products under the slogans of ‘Think’ and ‘Idea’, Lenovo, is pushing ahead with plans for not one, but two, tablet launches in the next few months, in a deliberate move away from PCs, Netbooks and Smartphones.The Chinese company is also expanding its market reach beyond home soil, by launching the tablets into US market over the next few months, and a third Windows based model later this year.
Just last month, however, the Chinese PC giant said it was planning to enter the consumer market in Australia later this year with a “sexy” new range of products, so we may well see the tablets entering the Oz market before too long.
A leaked reseller document which SmartHouse reported on in April also showed that the company was planning to launch an Android tablet in the B to B market that would compete against offerings from Cisco and Research in Motion Playbook, dubbed the ThinkPad tablet.
The move towards tablets is a logical one, since earlier this year, the company launched its LePad touchscreen tablet into the Chinese market, using the Android platform.
Running on Honeycomb and with 10-inch display screens, one of the soon to be launched tablets will be configured for consumer users under its IdeaPad branding, while the other will be aimed at business use as part of the ThinkPad series, which it acquired from IBM, and will include a stylus.
A third tablet 10 inch Windows based tablet is also planned for later in the year as well as smaller 7 inch Android tablets “later in the cycle”.
According to the company, tablets will replace netbooks and take more than 15 percent of the PC market, Lenovo President Rory Read, confirming that he believes “netbooks are pretty much over.”
However, Read believes that PCs will become more affordable to emerging markets, enabling Lenovo to retain a healthy growth.
According to 2010 figures, Lenovo holds the fourth spot in the global PC market, trailing Hewlett Packard, Dell and Acer. It grew 27 percent last year, and also said it planned to enter the consumer PC market in Australia.
However, for now the company seems to be focussing its attention on the tablet arena.
In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, Read said: “We’ve really been working to tailor the experience” of our tablets, Read said. “Some of the early-generation Android devices were a little ahead of their time, and what we’re doing here is making sure [our tablets] are strong. We only have one opportunity to make that first good impression.”
