Lenovo To Bring New PC Line To U.S.

The Lenovo systems will be sold through he channel and positioned as products aimed at the SOHO and SMB markets while IBM's existing line of PCs will be marketed toward customers seeking more feature rich systems, said Steve Ward, who is set to become CEO of Lenovo in the U.S.

"We're still working on exactly where the line between these systems and our existing systems is going to be," said Ward. "But we will have a full range systems available across all market segments."

Ward said the new line of Lenovo PCs would be priced aggressively against competitors such as Dell, while existing IBM systems would be positioned as offerings that sport additional features at prices that slightly undercut rival offerings.

"It's a misnomer that Dell is the low price leader. But this will make us a lot more competitive to Dell," Ward said.

Wards noted that Lenovo today enjoys after tax profits of about 5.3 percent of revenue and that number should increase once Lenovo begins selling higher margin ThinkPad systems. He added that while many people perceive that the IBM PC division is unprofitable, new sources for procurement and the ability to record services revenue to Lenovo rather than IBM Global Services would significantly improve profitabiity.

"Our model for the merged company is to grow faster then the industry and to grow our margins faster than our revenues," he said.

Yang Yuanqing, president and CEO of Lenovo in China said Lenovo is committed to a 100 percent channel model. "Whether it's for a single transaction or a customer that we have a relationship with, everything goes through the channel," he said.

He added that solution providers should expect to see Lenovo leverage its extensive call center and Web capabilities to drive leads to the channel.