Lenovo ready for consumer push

Lenovo has set up a business unit tasked with transforming the company into a consumer electronics powerhouse.

The internal unit will look for ways to introduce devices such as printers, smart phones, and music players that Lenovo already sells in China to a broader market, namely the U.S. and Europe. A Lenovo representative confirmed reports in the Shanghai Daily citing Sina.com that the unit will focus on the consumer business, which means it will also likely involve an effort to increase sales of PCs to consumers.

Lenovo is known primarily in the U.S. for its ThinkPad lineup of notebooks acquired from IBM in late 2004. The company has also introduced a lineup of Lenovo 3000 desktops and notebooks, but has struggled to break through to U.S. consumers in retail the way companies like Hewlett-Packard and Acer have. Lenovo sells some products at Office Depot and Circuit City, but has only managed to crack Best Buy through its Best Buy for Business stores, a subset of the giant electronics retailer's outlets.

PC companies have struggled trying to get into the profitable consumer electronics business for several years, but at least Lenovo already has a history of selling those products. For more details, go to the News.com story here.