Lenovo is set to kickstart a head on battle with Hewlett Packard and Dell in an effort to grow their share of the Australian B2B, consumer and enterprise, PC markets.

According to Nick Reynolds the Chief Marketing Officer for Lenovo the Chinese PC Company is sitting in third position behind Dell and HP despite having what he describes as a “superior product offering”.

He said that since Lenovo entered the Australian consumer PC market awareness of Lenovo has lifted from 10% to 50% and that in 20218 he is looking to lift that even further with an aggressive line up of new products particularly in the commercial and B2B markets.

Key to their strategy is a new generation of Lenovo products, that include a new X1 Carbon notebook, an X1 Yoga and an X1 tablet compete with built in projector. The Chinese Company is also set to release a brand-new Think Smart Hub for business collaboration.

With its black soft-feel cover, the ultralight ThinkPad X1 Carbon also has built in facial recognition, a fingerprint reader, built in global LTE capability, as well as rapid charging capability that delivers 15 hours of battery life from one hour of charging.
Another key product that is designed to deliver better collaboration and communication capability for small business is a unique Skype For Business ThinkSmart Hub.

This device allows business to manage connectivity using the recently expanded Skype for Business that is now built into Microsoft’s Office 365 offering.


Set to retail for $2,399 the device has a swivel screen, and two 360-degree microphones.

Reynolds believes tha there is a major opportunity for Lenovo in the B2B market selling collaboration technology and that their new SmartHub fixes a lot of the problems that currently exist.

He said that ‘most meeting rooms today suffer from connectivity problems. He claimed that a lot of board room meetings are delayed by an average of 10+ minutes due to ‘tech issues’ and that content sharing is not reliable and stable.

IT and Facilities teams have to provide and manage multiple devices, cables, ports and power outlets and that audio levels are often too low, and not always clear and that external participants find it hard to connect.

He added that Companies will spend $100B on “Collaboration Technology” in 2020 and that 92% of businesses are planning Workplace Transformation Initiatives (WTI) to build Smart Offices which is a major opportunity for Lenovo.

Reynolds said that key to Lenovo’s growth in Australia was three markets, consumer, B2B and Enterprise.

He admitted that Lenovo had “Under penetrated” the B2B market in Australia where De3ll and HP are strong.

“We need be seen more we need to be visible in these markets, we have superior products and we are now initiating a new campaign to better support these channels”.

In the USA the Lenovo Think Pad brand which was acquired from IBM is now being sold at Best Buy.

ChannelNews understands that the Lenovo has had discussions with JB Hi Fi with a view to selling the predominantly commercial notebook range at the mass retailer especially in stores that are located in or close to CBD and business markets.

Reynolds also defended Lenovo’s direct sell strategy which has seen the Company run extensive marketing campaigns in mass media for Lenovo commercial and consumer products.

He said “Online we are working to control the volume we sell. We often pass on volume leads to our resellers and we are working to support these resellers with additional marketing capability”.
In their latest ASIC filings Lenovo Australia which does include New Zealand reported AU$5.78 million in pre-tax profit, they paid AU$5.1 million in tax.

Revenue for the local operated climbed to AU$699.5 million, while revenue from services totalled AU$31.9 million.

Recently Lenovo Australia launched Lenovo PC-as-a-Service, which provides organisations with a fully-managed monthly lease-like service for desktops, laptops, and tablet devices.

At CES Google and Lenovo announced a standalone Daydream VR headset which does not require a smartphone.

They also announced the Mirage Solo which is the first headset to make use of Google’s WorldSense technology.

Worldwide shipments of desktops, notebooks, and workstations hit nearly 260 million units in 2017, the market’s most stable year since 2011, according to IDC.