But if there is one striking feature in the enterprise space over the past two years, it is Lenovo's rise. The company had a 5.7% share of this space in the first quarter of 2009, but over the past two quarters, it has been over 20%, according to estimates by research firm IDC. In Q4 of 2010, it touched 21.8%, against Dell's 19.2%.
These high figures may not sustain, considering that they reflect a significant increase in spending on IT infrastructure by very large enterprises or VLE (those over 1,000 employees), following the equally sharp decline in spending by them during the recession. Lenovo has been traditionally strong in the VLE space. But it is fair to say that the company is now well entrenched in the top 5.
Rahul Agarwal, executive director for Lenovo India's key accounts business, says more and more companies are recognizing the value of its premium products. "Earlier, most of our business was coming from existing customers.
But now, the proportion of business from new customers is increasing," he says. According to him, Lenovo India had about 25 new customers in Q1 of 2010, but this rose to about 75 in the last quarter.
Lenovo's ThinkPad range of laptops comes with powerful features that are extremely attractive to those that can afford them. These include features that make them almost immune to falls, crashes and coffee spills; they are also amongst the coolest and quietest.
But these very qualities and the premium pricing make them less attractive to other segments in the enterprise categorization --- large enterprises (those with employees between 500 and 1,000), and governmental and educational institutions. HCL has been strong in the government segment and Acer in education.
Agarwal says even these segments will slowly move to more premium products, and that's what Lenovo hopes to cash on.
Lenovo, based in China, is China's biggest PC player, and the world's fourth largest, after HP, Dell and Acer.
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