News

posted on 19 March 2008 04:43

EMC has set up its first ever joint-venture, one with its Chinese distributor to better grow its Chinese business. This adds a new context to its Iomega bid, as Iomega also has substantial Chinese market ambitions.

EMC DC Solutions (EDS) will be held 50:50 by EMC and Digital China Holdings Ltd, EMC's Chinese distribution partner. EDS will be chaired by Denis Yip, the president of EMC's Greater China unit, and its general manager will be Yao Wu, a VP of DCH.
It will have offfices in Beijing and Hong Kong and aim to ensure that Chinese hardware and software vendors' products work with EMC products.

DCH is one of China's largest distributors and system integrators and became independent from Lenovo eight years ago. It is owned by Legend Holdings which is connected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China is an important geography for EMC. It employs more than 1000 people in there, has four offices, and intends to open more.

If EMC can gain control of Iomega then it has excellent prospects of increasing its Chinese business as well as capitalising on Iomega's Chinese manufacturing and supplying products made there to the rest of the world.

EMC and Malaysia

Separately EMC Malaysia said it has a mid-market focus for 2008. The majority of its new customers came from that sector last year. Growth areas include the public sector, manufacturing, telecommunications, insurance and finance.

Malaysia's external storage market shrank 0.7 percent in 2007 according to IDC, which gave EMC a 52.8 percent market share in the high end external storage market and a 25.3 percent share in the mid-market, indicating room for growth there.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}