The recent ELCOT’s 1.5 million PC win and government projects give impetus to Lenovo’s commercial PC business. The company has further expanded its commercial business by adding IoT solutions
World PC brand Lenovo India has decided to change its focus from selling hardware PC and tablets to solution selling for its commercial PC business. The company has added a plethora of smart range of enterprise products including ThinkPad T490 and X390, ThinkCentre Nano and Nano IoT, ThinkPad P43s and ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 mobile workstations starting from INR 35,000 to INR 2.5 lakhs worth products.
In the commercial business, Chinese PC manufacturer has emerged as the market leader in PC and tablet segments in India in Q2 2019 with a market share of 46.2% and 45% respectively, according to IDC. Lenovo was followed by HP and Dell in the PC category and Samsung and iBall in the tablet category according to the report.
This leadership position can be attributed to the recent ELCOT’s deal, where Lenovo provided more than a million laptops for students in Tamil Nadu. This was one the largest PC deal that Lenevo India bagged and executed for ELCOT within three months of the project. We supplied 1.5 million units of laptops to ELCOT. In the previous bids, the size of the units were 4-5 lakhs, but this was the first-time ELCOT placed this largest PC scheme for free distribution of laptops to students of Tamil Nadu.
Moreover, the company has started manufacturing its mid-range of commercial and tablets PCs from its Pondicherry based plant where it is fulfilling the need of around 500 large global customer accounts locally. The recent government projects, GeM, digitisation of government services, enterprise, start-ups have added more opportunities to Lenovo’s PC business. Lenovo also introduced the Custom-to-order offering in India which vests in its customers the power to choose the configuration of their interest and create a laptop to match their needs.
Talking about the performance of the commercial business Lenovo India Director (Commercial Named Account Business) Stephen Sequeira said, “As we are getting more focused on solution selling’s of the PC. We have built several services around PC to make solutions smart, intelligent and secured. We have additional services like ThinkShield, asset recovery, device as a service and managed services. Our pie of upsell services increasing over box selling. Moreover, we are investing in adding new people and local manufacturing.”
Entering into IoT business
As the company is more centered on solution selling, it has also added IoT products into its commercial business. The company has added smart cameras, smart lighting, edge devices and combining these with security solutions for end to end IoT solutions. It has customised solutions for warehouses, retail, and manufacturing. It has recently installed its IoT solution at Amazon’s warehouse as part of global business. However, India has yet to see its initial wins.
Sequeira adds, “IoT is a fairly new business and we see huge potential for this line of business. Lenovo is making significant IoT investments to win over enterprise IoT clients, especially from among its existing customer relationships and contracts. Lenovo has invested in building up its enterprise IoT offering with new products and services, like its all-inclusive IoT solution bundles and a new smart vertical group.”
