Lenovo closes in on top PC vendor spot

IDG News Service - China's Lenovo, already a top brand in its home country, is focused on becoming a household name in major foreign markets as the company faces the prospect of becoming the world's largest PC vendor for the first time in its history.

Chances are the Chinese company could take the title some time in 2012 after achieving the highest growth rate among the top five companies for the last two years. Now ranked as the second largest, Lenovo's market share is just two percentage points below Hewlett-Packard's 16%, according to research firm IDC.
Lenovo's rise coincides with the world's largest PC market moving from the U.S. to China starting last year. Back in 1997, Lenovo for the first time became China's top PC vendor, where it has since gone on to claim a 35.3% market share on its home turf, a major factor in driving the company's growth, according to analysts.
Now fifteen years later, the Chinese PC maker wants to popularize the company's consumer brand in markets including the U.S., where Lenovo's sales still lag far behind those of its top competitors.
"We want to be the first big consumer brand to come out of China, which is a big challenge," said Lenovo's chief marketing officer David Roman in an interview. "I think within the next few years, we will become a very well-known brand in the personal electronics space."
Last year, Lenovo launched its first ever global marketing campaign, targeting consumers in North America, Japan, Germany, Russia, Japan and the U.K. This led the company to push ads with its new tagline, "For those who do," and even place its products in the hit movie "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."
The campaign's result has helped double brand awareness among customers aged 18 to 34, according to company surveys, Roman said. "In the U.S., from March 2011 to January 2012, we saw an increase of 204% in purchase consideration for Lenovo computers," he said.
"More and more will depend on the consumer space, which is where the technology is going," Roman added. "This has been a crucial priority for us."
It also marks an uphill battle for the Chinese company as it faces off with established consumer brands. Unlike its standing in the world market, Lenovo is the sixth largest PC vendor in the U.S., with a market share of 7.3%, according to IDC.
But the Chinese PC maker has managed to grow its business amidst other challenges affecting the market. In the last two years, Apple's iPad cut into the sales of traditional PC desktops and notebooks. "For every ten PCs sold, three to four of them will be iPads," said Michael Kauh, an analyst with research firm Canalys. Weak economic conditions have further dampened sales, bringing negative year-over-year growth to PC vendors HP and Acer in 2011.