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Report: Lenovo looking to buy MSI gaming laptop business

by Mark Tyson on 15 May 2015, 11:46

Tags: MSI

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MSI has a very high profile as a gaming laptop maker. The firm has successfully carved out a niche in this market and, as gamers are willing to pay more for hardware that will enhance the enjoyment of their hobby, it is a lucrative market. That contrasts to the millions of laptops sold by rivals which are viewed almost as commodity items and the profits from such sales are thus slim.

The buoyancy of the PC gaming and portable PC gaming markets has been noted by system building rivals, as we reported a couple of times last year. Seeing MSI's success in gaming laptops ASUS (ROG range), Gigabyte (AORUS range), Acer (Predator range), HP (Omen range) and others have sought to build/expand their gaming laptop product offerings to compete. In December it was noted that ASUS was closing in on MSI's gaming laptop lead by making such computers  aimed more at the middle-market than the top end.

Today Taiwan's DigiTimes has published a report saying that Lenovo, the world's largest PC systems maker, wants to buy MSI's gaming laptop operations. Its sources from supply chain makers said that "Lenovo is looking to raise its competitiveness in the gaming notebook industry and acquiring MSI would be the fastest way to achieve the purpose".

While MSI is denying the reports the DigiTimes sources say that MSI and Lenovo are still in negotiations and MSI is yet to turn down Lenovo's advances. With MSI soon to face tougher competition in the gaming laptop arena, with all the big-name new entrants, market watchers think that it might actually be a good time to sell the operations to get maximum value from it.

With no official statement from either camp we will have to wait and see if the talks result in anything actually happening. It must be noted that Lenovo isn't adverse to getting out its cheque book and buying businesses to expand, such as; IBM's global PC business, NEC PCs in Japan, Medion PCs of Germany and Motorola Mobility, for example.



HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Please Lenovo, call your gaming laptops the GamePad ;-)
= From Digitimes
Some market watchers noted that MSI may start facing fierce competition from Dell, Acer and Asustek

Considering Dell owns and makes Alienware, I kind of think the quoted source might want to do a bit more research on who is facing fierce competition from who.

Directly on topic -

Dear MSI. I have multiple pieces of your hardware. If you sell out to Lenovo, I'll take them out and set them on fire, and curse your name unto death.
GuidoLS


Dear MSI. I have multiple pieces of your hardware. If you sell out to Lenovo, I'll take them out and set them on fire, and curse your name unto death.

So… I take it you dislike Lenovo?
tribaljet
So… I take it you dislike Lenovo?

http://www.cnet.com/news/superfish-torments-lenovo-owners-with-more-than-adware/

The preloaded software, called Superfish, alters your search results to show you different ads than you would otherwise see. But it also tampers with your computer's security so that attackers can snoop on your browser traffic – no matter which browser you're using.

“Attackers are able to see all the communication that's supposed to be confidential – banking transactions, passwords, emails, instant messages,” said Timo Hirvonen, a senior researcher at security software maker F-Secure. That kind of threat, known as a man-in-the-middle attack because the hacker can spy on the users' Internet traffic and infiltrate their computer, poses a serious risk to consumers, he said.

Dislike isn't strong enough.
GuidoLS
http://www.cnet.com/news/superfish-torments-lenovo-owners-with-more-than-adware/



Dislike isn't strong enough.

Ah, I remember that but admittedly had forgotten. I can indeed agree upon that. However, (very) botched preloaded software with compromised security aside, their hardware remains solid so, from a purely hardware-related perspective, there are little signs that hardware quality would be impacted in a negative way.