A retail outlet of Lenovo, China's largest computer manufacturing company, in Beijing. Lenovo Group Ltd has agreed to buy Stoneware Inc of the US to gain cloud-computing products in its first acquisition of a software vendor. [File Photo]

Lenovo Group Ltd, the world's second-largest maker of personal computers, has agreed to buy Stoneware Inc of the US to gain cloud-computing products in its first acquisition of a software vendor.

Stoneware produces software used mainly by governments and schools to synchronize data across multiple mobile devices, said Mark Cohen, a Lenovo vice president. The closely held, Indianapolis-based company has 60 employees, he said yesterday, without disclosing terms.

The purchase is Lenovo's second in less than three weeks as CEO Yang Yuanqing expands the company to take on rivals including Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co in smartphones, tablets and Internet-ready televisions.

Lenovo will use Stoneware to build a "public cloud" for consumers, Cohen said. The service would compete with Apple's iCloud, which lets users store music, movies and applications and access them by the Internet and wirelessly.

The acquisition "helps us access and interface with users in a way that we haven't been able to do," Cohen said. "We are not trying to remake ourselves into a software company. What we're trying to do is selectively enter the software market where we can make a difference for our customers, and to support our overall strategy."

Lenovo, whose headquarters are in Beijing and Morrisville, North Carolina, has focused previous acquisitions on hardware. It bought the PC division of International Business Machines Corp in 2005. Last year, the company acquired control of Medion AG, a Germany-based computer maker, and the PC unit of Tokyo-based NEC Corp.

On September 5, Lenovo unveiled plans to buy the Sao Paulo-based consumer electronics group known as CCE for about US$147 million.

Cloud computing refers to data and software stored in "clouds" of servers that can be accessed anywhere by devices with web access, including smartphones and tablet computers.

Lenovo has been in a partnership to re-sell Stoneware's software for the past two years, during which time the company's revenue doubled, Stoneware CEO Rick German said in an interview, without supplying more specific details.

"We hope to do far better than that as we come together," German said. The software maker is profitable and was founded in 2000, he said.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year, Cohen said.

Related

• Lenovo buys CCE to bank on Brazil in bid for profit growth
• Chinese PC maker Lenovo to buy Brazil CCE
• Lenovo shares fall 7.6% after NEC sells stake
• Lenovo eyes acquisitions to grow

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)