It seems that Chinese company Lenovo finally decided to take own brand to the new horizons. After being seen as IBM with different name for most of time since they acquired IBM’s PC Division, Lenovo decided to go strong with brand name promotion by sponsoring Winter Olympic Games. Lenovo became world’s third-largest PC maker with 6.4% market share behind leaders Dell and HP with 17.2% and 14.7% market share respectively (according to research published by iSuppli). However, Lenovo finished 2005. as number one on Chinese market, ahead of mentioned companies. That said, last year was definitely successful for Lenovo, but that’s hardly enough since both Dell and HP are expecting significant raise in market share trough this year.
Lenovo decided to strike and they did it good. By introducing new and very cheap line of desktop and notebook PCs, Lenovo did something IBM was afraid to do for many years. They’ve decided to use AMD’s cheap and effective Sempron along with powerful Athlon64 processors in their configurations. With new line, Lenovo finally gave customers something they really wanted and needed – a choice. Not to mention that their new notebooks aren’t black. Of course, such decision gave Lenovo more flexibility in terms of price, but it also put great pressure on Dell to rethink its policy on use of Intel-only processors in their configurations.
Yey, I know that you read about possible Dell-AMD partnership every single day with rumors floating around, and it is getting definitely boring, but Dell can’t ignore the threat, not anymore. After being so sure in Intel processors, Michael Dell isn’t giving famous speeches about quality and quantity, but he is rather being open to all solutions that would benefit his company. If there is one thing company can’t ignore, then its market and customers, and customers obviously want more solutions to choose from. Dell knows it and in my opinion it is really just matter of time before partnership between Dell and AMD is announced. If they want to remain world’s largest PC maker, they have to change, and the change is happening right now. Negotiations with Google about adding Google’s software on Dell’s configurations along with Intel’s “new love”, Apple, should be clear signs for everyone. Dell isn’t going to crack partnership with companies that made Dell great, Intel and Microsoft, but Dell isn’t going to let its market to others, and if it means installing Google applications and adding AMD processors to their configurations, so it will be. As Rahul Sood said, it is no longer matter of “if”.
Speaking about Rahul, I have to mention his already famous bet with Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian. Those fellows have somewhat different opinion on whole Dell-AMD case. On one side there is Rahul with his belief about Dell and AMD working together pretty soon, while on the other side is Charlie who believes in forever love of Intel and Dell. They’ve put a bet, and fate of the world will be decided on upcoming IDF where the loser will wear pinky bunny suit for one day. Yey. I guess it was the only way to slow Charlie in his quest for another title in super fast PC assembling. To spice things a little bit, maybe they should add some contest for cheerleaders and for best geek cheerleader offer some prices like date with famous Inq-Dell girl or some nasty VoodooPC configuration, depending who wins the bet. Anything can happen if you believe.
