By Winston Chai
Wednesday, April 30 2003 09:10 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,39128981,00.htm

Looking to spruce up its image for overseas customers, China-based Legend Group has replaced the twenty-year-old brand name and logo found on its products.

The company unveiled the English brand name Lenovo to take the place of its current Legend moniker, a move which the firm described as "laying the groundwork" for international expansion.

For business activities in China, Legend will continue to use its "Lian Xiang" Chinese brand name in Chinese characters, together with Lenovo in Western script.

"For overseas markets, Lenovo will be used alone," said the firm. While the firm is universally recognized in China for its desktops, notebooks, mobile phones and handhelds, its name is mostly unknown outside the country.

"On our way to becoming internationalized, we need to have an English brand name that can be used unrestrictedly in markets worldwide," said Yang Yuanqing, Legend's president and chief executive officer. "However, the original English name--Legend--has been registered by others in many countries."

The company's name will remain Legend Holdings.

While Lenovo provides an opportunity for the company to start on a fresh footing overseas, some feel that it comes at the sacrifice of two decades of brand-building.

"It is a shame they can’t use the Legend name overseas as it carries a lot of weight and brand equity," said Bryan Ma, a senior manager with market research firm International Data Corp (IDC).

Yang said Legend also plans to sink in one billion yuan (US$121 million) in the research and development of new products, but did not mention what the new products would be.

Underscoring the firm's global ambitions, Legend's chief financial officer Mary Ma added she hopes to quadruple overseas sales to 20 percent of annual revenue in five years, from less than five percent today.

While the growth targets have been set, plans for international expansion are far less concrete.

"Legend has not been very clear about the markets they are going after, whether it is the U.S., Canada or Western Europe," said IDC's Ma. "If they are going into the U.S., a key challenge would be to establish relationships with corporate customers, something which global PC giants have already done."

Legend said it hopes to finish the renaming exercise in six months. From today, all products except PC motherboards will bear the revamped logo.

According to IDC, Legend has retained its position as the leading desktop and notebook vendor in Asia-Pacific. Though it sells mainly in China, the PC behemoth commanded a 13.2 percent market share in the region in the last quarter of 2002, thanks to the huge domestic market.

Legend is ahead of global heavyweights Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell, which held 8.7 percent, 6.3 percent and 5.8 percent market share, respectively.