Two events shook up the Brazilian computer manufacturing market on Tuesday. The Brazil’s personal-computer maker Positivo Informática announced that it will start producing mobile phones and smartphones. On the same day, it was rumored that China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. intends to acquire Brazil electronic goods manufacturer CCE.
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The Lenovo purchase was taken as fact by the Brazilian Exame magazine, but the market will know for sure on September 5, when the Chinese company will hold a press conference in São Paulo with chair Yang Yuanqing present for what it said will be “the biggest announcement in the company’s history in Brazil.”
If the rumors are right, it will be a big announcement indeed. Lenovo has tried for many years to buy a local computer manufacturing company in Brazil. Up until now, Lenovo’s target was Positivo. It is interesting to note that Positivo chose the same day as speculation swirled around Lenovo’s acquisition to announce its entrance into the mobile device market.
“The company has decided to enter the cellphone and smartphone market since it seeks to diversify revenues,” Positivo said in a statement. Positivo Informática is the information technology arm and the biggest part of a larger organization named Grupo Positivo. In addition to computers, Grupo Positivo produces educational software, electronic games and set-top boxes for Brazilian digital television.
Lenovo’s role
In Gartner’s second quarter PC shipment report, the research firm noted that HP continued to lead in worldwide PC shipments with 14.9% of the market, but its global shipments have declined 12.1%. The company also faced aggressive pricing from Lenovo in the professional market and threats from companies such as ASUS and Samsung in the already crowded consumer markets.
Lenovo had 14.7% of the total market share in the 2Q12. Gartner pointed out that Lenovo’s shipment growth continued to exceed the worldwide average, significantly narrowing its market share gap with HP.
“Lenovo has been very aggressive to expand through a series of acquisitions, as well as aggressive pricing,” Gartner wrote in its analysis. “Lenovo’s aggressive expansion damaged its competitors’ performance, namely HP and Dell, by taking share from them. Lenovo showed significant growth in EMEA though there is growing concern of the inventory build toward the second half of 2012.”
In Brazil, the PC market stagnated during the first half of 2012, as IDC pointed out in its Brazil Quarterly PC Tracker report. The total sales for 1H12 totaled almost 7.8 million units sold, only 2% more than the same period of 2011. There was also a slow rise across BRICs: during the same period, PC sales increased 37% in Russia, 9% in India and 3% in China.
Portable computers, such as notebooks, ultrabooks and netbooks, accounted for 55% of the total, which is 15% higher than 1H11. Desktop sales were down 11%.
