Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), China's largest personal-computer (PC) vendor, could set up a branch in Taiwan as soon as next month, with the government set to approve the application in the near future, a government official said yesterday.
The move would make Lenovo the first Chinese PC vendor in Taiwan.
"The application is sorted to be handled as an ad hoc case ... and we will approve [it] in the very near future," Emile Chang (張銘斌), spokesman of the Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said yesterday.
Since the Mainland Affairs Commission (MAC) has agreed to give its approval in principle, the rest was just a formality, he said.
According to the application, IBM's Dutch PC unit will set up a branch in Taiwan before ultimately transferring all the stakes to Lenovo, Chang added.
Such an arrangement was originally made to bypass possible regulatory interference in light of the nation's lack of government relations with China, but the case remained subject to the MAC's approval, which delayed the company's plan for about two months.
IBM Taiwan yesterday remained evasive about the matter. Laurence Hwang (
He declined to comment on whether Lenovo computers would be introduced to Taiwan, saying that the decision would depend on the results of market research.
However, an analyst seemed bearish about the future of Lenovo-labeled computers in Taiwan's market, citing Taiwanese consumers' perceptions about cheap Chinese products.
"Taiwan's fragmented and limited PC market, which is already dominated by international brands like HP and Dell and local vendors like Acer and Asus, has little space for newcomer brands," said Simon Yang (楊勝帆), director of PC industry research at Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業研究所).
Yang said that, even if Lenovo were to roll out laptops priced at US$549 in Taiwan, as it did in its home market, Taiwanese companies could still afford to follow suit.
Lenovo officially became the world's third-largest computer vendor in the second quarter after acquiring Big Blue's PC unit, with its market share tripling to 7.6 percent of the global market of 46.6 million units since then, according to the latest figures released by International Data Corp (IDC) earlier this week.
Dell Inc remained the leader in the global PC sector with a market share of 19.3 percent, followed by Hewlett-Packard Ltd with 15.6 percent. Acer Inc is in fourth place with a market share of 4.4 percent, followed by Fujitsu Siemens Computers with 3.7 percent, IDC said.
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