Lenovo: HP is after your customers

Lenovo has sharpened attacks on HP as it ramps up its assault on the Australian SMB market.

Milko van Duijl, president of Lenovo's mature markets, said HP's acquisition of IT services integrator EDS was a threat to HP's channel.

"HP is looking to come into the services business," said van Duijl. "For some partners that means that their customers could buy services direct from HP", leaving only the lower-margin hardware sales to the reseller. "That's not good for the partner."

Van Duijl claimed that he had been approached by HP resellers concerned about HP's plans in services. "A lot of partners have a big part of their business with HP and that makes them nervous," he said.

Resellers were better off selling hardware from a manufacturer only, added van Duijl. "With Lenovo what you see is what you get. We are not doing integration, or other services. We have the best quality, best design, and I ‘m not moving out of that core."

Lenovo claimed a 20 percent market share in the corporate space thanks to its ThinkPad, but "single digit" market share in SMB.

Lenovo hoped to break into the SMB market through building up its reseller base. To that end, the vendor has cut back on its direct sales team in Australia and other mature markets and reinvested the money into channel programs, said van Duijl.

Van Duijl said Lenovo, which draws 75 percent of its revenue from the ThinkPad brand, didn't have many products in the low end of the market but had been working to address that for its SMB customers.

"The market is moving towards the mid-range to low end," said Van Duijl.

Van Duijl said Lenovo had established a solid partner program with "good margins", now had a good range of products targeted at the SMB, and would not move from manufacturing into services or compete against its channel.

Van Duijl said the company was "slowly expanding" into retail. Lenovo wanted to wait until it had enough established business through the reseller channel before moving to retail.

"In retail you can lose your shirt," said Van Duijl. "I don't plan on going into Harvey Norman [yet], for example. It is extremely difficult to make money."