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.
