PC supplier expects good growth in South Africa

"2010 was an exceptional year for us, because we not only exceeded our own growth projections, we also grew significantly faster than the market and we did that across all our market sectors: corporate, small and medium business, and consumer," says Lenovo South Africa country manager, Henry Ferreira.

"This indicates both that our business plan was relevant and effective and that our sales and distribution eco-system functioned precisely as planned, delivering even growth across all the areas that matter to us. In addition, last year, we had some exciting new lines to launch, which has kept our brand building campaign fresh and interesting.

"In support of the quality of our product, however, we chose to keep our strategy clean and simple - and go back to basics. That meant making sure we had the right strategy, the right channel structure, the right partners equipped with training and support from us, and the right after sales service.

"Clearly, this enabled us to perform optimally as well as being competitive on price. We believe, though, that price is very rarely the issue. What customers are interested in is the overall package - and we ensured that our package was among the most desirable out there."

Lenovo South Africa is responsible for Lenovo business in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, which is forecast to grow significantly during 2011. The middle or SMB market, particularly, is expected to respond positively to rapidly escalating consumer spend. The group will be looking to operate as leanly as possible, given analyst predictions, such as those of IDC, that overall growth rates in 2012 will be less than 2%.