LENOVO, DELL LURE SMBS WITH LATEST RANGE OF LAPTOPS

Anirvan Ghosh, Bangalore
The Economic Times (Delhi edition)

As Indian SMBs are growing rapidly and aspire for a bigger and better slice of their respective verticals, they are being targeted by the IT majors, who want to sell their laptops. Dell and Lenovo have put in place models and strategies to get the same.

A study by AMI-Partners found that 43 percent of PC-owning SMBs in India have a mobile workforce, compared with only 22 percent in 2006, making this segment the fastest growing and increasingly dependent on notebooks.

Lenovo has made SMBs a target by introducing new versions of its Thinkpad range. This series, called ThinkPad SL, incorporates three models. "These have been tailor- made for SMBs," says Amar Babu, MD, Lenovo India.

For example, the series rides on ThinkPad's brand values of durability and reliability, factors that SMB users rate as most important, while excluding some of the features that only the large enterprises require, allowing Lenovo to provide a more affordable solution for the SMB customers, says Babu.

Dell has come up with two new models for this sector. Sameer Garde, GM, Dell India says: “Mobility is an import factor that prompts SMBs to shift to notebooks from desktops on a large scale. Since traveling accounts to a great amount of the executives' schedule in emerging businesses, it is only the mobile devices that can help them do business on the move." For both Dell and Lenovo, their studies indicate that such businesses would want the best quality, but at a price that they can afford.

That extends to the after sales services. Lenovo has planned a custom package for this sector, which has a warranty upgrade for the very next day. In the next couple of months it plans to launch a one-stop hardware and software support exclusively for SMBs.

A report by MAIT, a body representing India's IT hardware, said that IT consumption in 2007-08 was led by a sharp 114 percent growth in notebook sales while purchases of desktop units was much lower. The companies say that this growth is being partly driven by sales of tailor-made models for SMBs. Sales of laptops currently account for a quarter of the total sales of PCs in the country.