Ingram puts on a show

The Ingram/Tech Pacific juggernaut attracted 900-odd channel punters to its Tech Expo shindig at the Melbourne Convention Centre this month.

Fresh from a successful Hobart event, the Expo – which will travel to other Australian cities throughout the
rest of the year – was nothing less than impressive.

Of all the Ingram/TP vendors exhibiting, the likes of HP, Belkin, Lexmark and Acer seemed to have dug deep into their pockets to devise some pretty impressive displays to show their wares to the throng of Victorian resellers in attendance.

Ingram wheeled out the converged home ‘lounge room’ kitted out with a $28,000 LCD screen that the vast majority of Australian households could not afford.

Still, bloody good business if you could get it! Hmmm, if only money was no object.

The Lexmark stand featured an Indy Car replica. The printer vendor was the major Australian sponsor of last year’s Indy event at Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Done deal?

So the IBM-Lenovo deal is a fait accompli, no?

Well, it probably is, now that US regulators have decided not to thwart on grounds of national security the deal between the computer giant’s PC unit and Lenovo, which lists the government of China as one of its leading shareholders.

But on the same day the Bush administration gave the green light, Beijing Business Today reported that some of the banks that had agreed to float Lenovo US$600 million for the deal are getting cold feet.

The report also coincided with China’s threats to take Taiwan to war if the democratic island doesn’t back off on its assertions of independence.

With a potential geopolitical nightmare on the horizon, it may turn out for Stephen Ward, Lenovo’s CEO-in-waiting, that the only thing worse than the US Government blocking the deal is the feds approving it.