Lenovo ASEAN plans to establish an Indonesian subsidiary company in March 2012 to help manage its business locally, a top executive says.

“We are aiming to increase our market share in Indonesia to about 10 percent as soon as possible,” Lenovo ASEAN general manager and executive director Koh Kong Meng told reporters recently at Lenovo’s office in central Jakarta.

Lenovo’s total market share in Indonesia increased to 7.3 percent in the third quarter from 5.8 percent in the second quarter this year. Lenovo managed to sell about 93,000 computers in the third quarter, a 1.5 percent increase compared to second quarter sales of about 80,000 units.

Sandy Lumy, Lenovo Indonesia country general manager, said that the status of Lenovo Singapore Pte. Ltd.’s representative office in Jakarta would be changed into the headquarters of PT Lenovo Indonesia.

“Lenovo imports from China to Indonesia, including customs clearance will be conducted by PT Lenovo Indonesia,” Sandy told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He said that faster product delivery would be one of the advantages of the subsidiary company as speed was a key element in the business.

Koh said that Lenovo would also aggressively build channel capacity in Indonesia to ensure sufficient retail coverage across the country and heighten brand recognition.

At present, Lenovo has more than 600 outlets in 13 cities, 53 service centers in 24 cities and 11 pick-up and drop-off services in Jakarta.

Koh said that Lenovo was also aiming to be the global number one. “We cannot determine when the target can be achieved,” he said, adding that it was a long-term goal.

He said he believed that Lenovo could achieve the worldwide pole position because it had been the fastest growing personal computer (PC) vendor in the world for the last eight quarters.

Koh said that to help achieve this goal, Lenovo would target emerging markets, such as Indonesia, because these markets were still very new and very young. “Although PC penetration is less than 10 percent the population is huge,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Computer Entrepreneurs Association (Apkomindo) chairman Suhanda Wijaya told the Post on Thursday that PC penetration in Indonesia was very low at about 6 percent, but it had potential to develop.

He predicted that the PC market in the country would increase by 20 percent in 2012 from 5.2 million in 2011. (drs)