Lenovo Rolls Out PCs With Its Own Name

In its most significant step to date toward transitioning IBM-branded PCs to those of its new corporate parent, Lenovo has rolled out its first line of desktops and notebooks outside its home base of China without the coveted Big Blue label.

The company's new Lenovo 3000 line also comes without the Think designation of ThinkVantage desktops and ThinkPad notebooks. At a media event in New York Thursday, the company rolled out aggressively priced desktops, starting at $349, and notebooks entering at $599. The new dual-branded strategy introduces the Lenovo brand targeted at small businesses and will be sold primarily through the channel, company officials said.

"The whole 3000 family is primarily a channel play," said Bryan Thomas, Lenovo's worldwide desktop product marketing manager. "That speaks to the customer set we are going after and how they buy."

Craig Merrigan, Lenovo's vice president of branding and strategy, said he anticipates more than 75 percent of sales will go through the channel. To support that, the company will roll out a new channel program aimed at bringing the new line into the SMB segment at IBM's PartnerWorld conference in Las Vegas next month.

The new program, he said, won't affect existing partners but is intended at educating new partners targeted at small business rather than emerging enterprises and large organizations. "We need a lot more business partners, i.e. tier 2 resellers that target the small-business segment," Merrigan said. The program will see new marketing, education and incentives.

"We will be aggressively recruiting them," adding that the desired number of net-new partners is in the thousands. How that will affect distribution is not clear, though he added that he is looking at a much more transactional businesses model.

The new Lenovo C Series notebooks will sport a more modern and stylish look, and will be available in various colors. The C100 will come with an Intel 915 chipset, with either a Pentium M or Celeron processors. Lenovo will also offer Centrino systems. The notebooks will come with 8-cell lithium-ion batteries rated at 5 hours of battery life.

The 6.2-pound C100 will sport a 15-inch display, and at1.3 inches thick with a built-in memory-card reader, will offer 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN connectivity and Bluetooth as an option in some models and a recordable-DVD drive. The C-Series will ship in early March.

Later in March, Lenovo will ship the N-Series, which will be available with 14-inch and 15.4-inch wide-screen displays. Next quarter, the 12-inch V-Series will ship.

The ThinkPads for now will continue to keep the IBM brand, Merrigan said. Asked if designating the 3000 line without the ThinkPad could dilute that brand, Merrigan said, if anything, it will enhance it. "I think this strengthens the Think position, he said.

While Lenovo's notebooks will be offered only with Intel processors, the desktops will be offered with both Intel Pentium 4 and Celeron Ds, as well as AMD Semperon and Athlon processors. The J100 systems will be Intel systems and the J105 will have AMD processors. Dual core systems will follow later in the year.