SL and R series gets axed, replaced by L series

You mention Acer, which is quite true. But under Indian conditions (where the laptop market is increasing exponentially), the company to watch out for is Dell. And as for locating manufacturing facilities, take a look at this. Maybe a little bit into the future, but not too far away.

 

The Dell's plant in India will process half finished machines. HP is wholly dependent on their Contract Manufacturers for everything. While, Lenovo still have lot of neg-ling issues of logistics and US market share, so don't think Lenovo will foraying into the Indian business as of yet.

Acer trumps all other tier one competitors in terms of price and features (it is a Taiwanese company that has lot of connections and experience with Contract Manufacturing and their businesses, Wistron was part of its operation until it was demerged), and this is something that wins more buyers than design or brands.

 

Acer buy it's way into the top. Gateway, Emachine, Packard Bell. The likelihood of dell moving out of China is very slim, they are just build relationship with India, so if China RMB increase in value, they could go to India.

 

No...no...I wasn't suggesting that Lenovo is going to set up shop in India. What I was trying to point out is that it seems that Lenovo has no choice but to go after the consumer market and that too in the "emerging market" space. But to do this by diluting the ThinkPad brand is, well - to my mind - somewhat questionable. What I was suggesting is that they could develop a dedicated series to compete price and performance-wise against Dell and HP in these markets (including India). By extending the ThinkPad line into the consumer segment, they would only succeed in squandering away the advantages of the ThinkPad brand. Thus, for example, instead of markeing the Edge as a ThinkPad varient, they could have launched a Edge Series to compete against say, the Acer Gemstone (or whatever is their latest series) line.

 

I don't recall me linking to anything .

But Lenovo is also targeting the emerging south american middle class as well.

 

Yeah sorry! I was referring to the link provided by K2001...my mistake.

 

Dell's factory in China is there to avoid the tariff and serve the Chinese market. Most of laptops are shipped to various Dell's manufacturing depot as semi-finished machines from their contract manufacturers.

Foxconn has looked into moving their factories out of China due to increased wage rate, but at the end of the day, the increased cost of setting up a different supply chain overseas, and abandoning their Chinese operations, which took them good 20 years to slowly buildup, seems not worth it.

If you go to China's manufacturing triangle park in places like Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc, and see how large the supply chain is and how tightly they works, then you would know it is not going to be an easy move to make. If the nodes in the supply chain gets separated, then the cost of procuring many parts would go up exponentially, and price of computer will once again go up.

 

While essentially correct, you may want to look at the this info about Dell manufacturing in India., and this. Note the year in which this was started (2007). Now there are allegedly plans to start another manufacturing facility to cater to not only the Indian market, but also the Middle Eastern and African markets from their Indian bases.

Edit: Also, look at this. All this being given, I also don't think Dell will move out of China in the short to medium term. They probably would take the time to develop their support infrastructure in India. Moreover, it would make sense for Dell to remain in China (all things remaining constant) to service the East Asian market and expand in India to serve the domestic Indian, Middle Eastern, and African markets.

But what has all this to do with Lenovo diluting their ThinkPad lines? Let's hope that even if this (dilution of the brand) does occur, some of the "authentic" ThinkPad machines will survive, which I can buy in the future.

 

Well, now the R400 has been removed, along with the X200 tablet. Interesting.

 

And replace with what? The "L" series? I hope the T series won't be either removed or tampered with in any significant way. That is the next machine I'd like to get.

 

The T510 and W510 is already changed slightly, by using the ultrabay enhanced drives rather than the slim drive. By that Lenovo have also increased the thickness of the base on the T510 and W510.

T510 is basically a progeny of the of the T500 + R500

 

But hopefully, there will always be a 14" version which maintains the traditional advantages that ThinkPads boast of - like the R/T series. For some reason I find the 14" to be the most functionally comfortable form factor for me having previously used the 15" and the smaller netbooks.