According to China Daily report on Friday, Lenovo has set up a unit to develop a video game console for the China market, pitting it against rivals such as Microsoft and Sony.

The China Daily reported that about 40 Lenovo software engineers have been spun off from the company to work for Beijing eedoo Technology, which will be tasked with developing and marketing the “eBox” game console.

Lenovo, its unlisted parent Legend Holdings, and its private equity arm Legend Capital co-invested in the new company, but did not disclose investment figures.

Lenovo has been trying to diversify away from selling only the heavily commoditized personal computer, having launched in the past year a smartphone in its home market and announcing plans to roll out a tablet PC.

Lenovo and eedoo officials were not immediately available for comment.

PC vendor Lenovo has appointed Metra Computer as an authorised distributor for the UAE and Qatar in what represents its latest move to fine-tune its regional distribution structure.

Metra, which is already a Lenovo distributor in Egypt, will be tasked with helping Lenovo develop its consumer and SMB business in both markets.

Speaking to Channel Middle East, Ali Al-Amine, regional transactional business director at Lenovo, said the tie-up reflected recent steps that Lenovo has taken to strengthen its channel business with effective in-country distribution.

“We aligned our strategy and go-to-market on the SMB and consumer side approximately three quarters ago and one of the things that Lenovo did not have was coverage across the region,” he said. “We had distributors trading from the UAE across the GCC and Middle East area, but our strategy is now to have a distributor on the ground in each geography.”

Metra becomes Lenovo’s third distributor in the UAE, alongside FDC and GBM Distribution, and its first in Qatar.

In Kuwait, meanwhile, Lenovo has just added Al-Ghanim as an official consumer products distributor, further reinforcing its local distribution intent.  

Al-Amine said there was a possibility that Metra’s contract could be extended to other regional markets where it is looking to build local coverage, but stressed that no decision had yet been taken and other candidates were also in the frame.

In a statement confirming the tie-up, Metra’s managing director NY Prasad, said Lenovo was a welcome addition to the company’s portfolio.

“Lenovo is a strong brand in the PC market and is an added value to our company. Lenovo’s products complement our service offerings and we foresee good demands for their products ranges in the market,” he stated.
ThinkPad R50 battery ThinkPad R51 battery ThinkPad R52 battery ThinkPad T40 battery

More than 200 Lenovo F41 laptop users have demanded the Chinese computer maker replace their faulty batteries.

Most of the customers bought the laptops after March 2008, and the problematic batteries were provided by Sony and made in Japan, the Beijing Times reported.

The newspaper said about 270 people joined an online forum and demanded Lenovo replace the batteries, because the warranty period had expired.

The members complain that the batteries run out of power in about 20 minutes.

Some members said the battery died when the battery management system showed there was still 70 percent energy left.

“I bought my laptop in May 2008, and in June, I found my laptop would switch off if it showed there was still 50 percent energy left,” Wan Zhengpeng, a 20-year-old student from the Chinese Agriculture University, told Metro yesterday.

“I keep running down and recharging the battery completely every month as Lenovo advised, but it did not make my battery work as long as it should,” he said.

Lenovo and Sony were not available to comment yesterday.

A Lenovo spokesperson told the Beijing Times that the company had received complaints from more than 60 users. They sent two batteries for testing to Sony headquarters in Tokyo on Oct 30.

They promised to provide new Sony batteries for the 60 users who complained.

The Lenovo F41 computers hit the market in the second half of 2007, and sold about 2 million units.

The spokesperson told the newspaper that the current complaints were not a common problem.

It was reported that three brands of batteries were used in the model, but the other two brands of battery were not faulty.

In August, Lenovo recalled Thinkpad laptops because its Sony batteries were too hot while in operation.

Lenovo will announce a “smartbook” at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the company confirmed on Thursday.

The smartbook, basically a netbook that uses an ARM processor and a non-Windows operating system, was also mentioned in a speech given by Paul Jacobs, chief executive of Qualcomm, at its investors day analyst conference. The smartbook will be powered by Qualcomm’s embedded, ARM-based Snapdragon processor.

“Earlier today was our financial analyst meeting and Paul Jacobs briefly demonstrated a prototype design,” a Qualcomm spokeswoman said in an email. “At this time, that is all the information that we can share.

What the netbook will cost, or what it will be named, remain unknowns. “Lenovo is developing a smartbook based on Snapdragon, which we expect to announce at CES,” a spokeswoman said in an email. “Unfortunately, there are no further details at this point.”

The device will be sold by AT&T, probably as part of a subsidized data plan, as other wireless carriers have done. While an AT&T spokesman confirmed the relationship, however, he offered no further details. “We are working with Lenovo and Qualcomm and believe Lenovo will share more on its device at CES in January,” an AT&T spokesman said. “Until then, we have no more details to share.”

The smartbook would not be the industry’s first; Freescale said in a statement that it has already worked with Sharp to develop a smartbook that has begun shipping in Japan.

Lenovo, however, would be a new addition to the smartbook stable. Although other manufacturers have not announced their own smartbook products, Asian manufacturers ranging from Asus to Toshiba to Wistron showed off prototypes at this year’s Computex show.

Any smartbook, however, will be forced to use Linux or some other operating system. Microsoft has said previously that its Windows platform will not run on ARM, the microprocessor architcture underlying the Qualcomm Snapdragon and the Freescale platforms. In January, however, Qualcomm demonstrated the Google Android system running on a smartbook.