Lenovo Makes Bid for Packard Bell

By Geoff Duncan Published June 1, 2011

Lenovo Makes Bid for Packard Bell — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Current number three computer maker Lenovo has announced it plans to buy Packard Bell, saying it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with an independent third party to buy the European computer maker. Lenovo has reportedly been competing with Taiwan’s Acer to buy the firm; the two companies have been competing fiercely to increase their share of the global PC marketplace, where they currently tussle for third place behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

Possible financial details of a Packard Bell acquisition have not been disclosed, with Lenovo only noting the deal, if it goes through, might constitute a “disclosable transaction” under Hong Kong stock exchange rules. Packard Bell is currently valued at about $800 million. Packard Bell was acquired by eMachines founder Lap Shun “John” Hui in October of last year for an undisclosed amount. Hui currently owns five percent of U.S. computer maker Gateway, leading to speculation that Lenovo’s move might lead to an acquisition of Gateway. Before acquiring Packard Bell, Hui offered Gateway $450 million to take over its retail business; Gateway declined.

Recommended Videos

A Packard Bell acquisition is seen as a good move for Lenovo, potentially enabling it to expand its European market share, where the company doesn’t currently have a strong footprint and is barely profitable. In contrast, rival Acer already does significant business in Europe, and wouldn’t benefit as much from rolling in another European computer maker.

Former Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Google Earth’s AI misadventure lasted only a day. It was a tale of dangerous ignorance.

Nuclear reactors, tanks, and historical destruction on a life-like satellite map? Yeah, that's bad.

Nano Banana AI image generator representation.

Technology behemoths are clearly not reading the room, or they are just moving faster than they should when it comes to AI deployment. Google has already stuffed its Gemini AI in every corner of its software stack, from Android to daily productivity tools like Gmail that are used by hundreds of millions of users every day. AI is everywhere. Not all of it is bad, mind you. But in a few places, it just feels forced.

In its latest AI-fication experiment, the company targeted Google Earth. The idea was to let the audience use its Nano Banana 2 AI image generator and make images that can be placed on the map view. On paper, it's a cool idea. What would the Colosseum of Rome look like in your urban neighborhood? Yeah, fun stuff like that.

Computing

AMD is apparently gearing up to raise GPU prices right after Nvidia’s steep hike

AMD has reportedly told AIB partners about a price hike that goes into effect in. August.

AMD RX 7800

AMD is next in line to raise the asking price of its Radeon GPUs, merely days after the news of a similar hike coming for Nvidia graphics cards started making waves. As per ChannelGate on Weibo (h/t VideoCardz), AMD has informed its board partners that the price of GPU and memory bundles will go up by at least 10% in August.

Is a similar price hike coming for standalone graphics cards? I won't be surprised if that happens. The situation is so bad that AMD is planning to bring back graphics cards with 4GB of onboard memory. AMD just introduced the RX 9050 GPU, which costs $279. Notably, it's just $20 less than the RX 9060 XT that offers double the graphics memory.

Computing

Microsoft will make Windows work well with just 8GB RAM. We desperately need it

The dream of a reliable and affordable Windows laptop hinges on the next milestone at Microsoft.

Surface laptop on wooden table

The year 2026 has marked a huge course correction for Microsoft after years of frustrating users with plenty of confusing processes, unoptimized UI elements, and just the generous bloatware that can bring any Windows system to a crawl. Microsoft has finally shifted into a new phase. From fixing the right-click behavior to speeding up the Search system, the company has fixed plenty of papercuts.

The next major milestone is making Windows 11 run smoothly on Windows PCs with just 8GB of RAM. That directly means entry-level and budget laptops will at least get the basics right, even if that means sacrificing the on-device AI bells and whistles. Let's face it. The increasingly AI-first approach to computing on a Windows 11 machine is a little too taxing on the hardware at hand.