Legend QDI hits Australian shores

Ken Lowe, MD at BCN Technology said the companies had been talking for the past nine months regarding the deal in Australia.

BCN will hit the ground running distributing the company's range of motherboards, video cards, wireless LAN and USB drive products.

Over the next few months, it plans to introduce notebook computers and digital cordless phones targeted at the home and office to its portfolio, Lowe said. Founded in 1988, Legend QDI is a business unit of the Legend Group Limited – which is China's largest PC manufacturer with a claimed 30 percent market share.

Legend QDI will join the likes of Sony, LG, Netcomm, Swann, Powerware, Canon, Epson, CPU and motherboard maker VIA, videocard maker Leadtek and multimedia components maker Hercules Gilmore on its distribution books.

The company will also be offered “bare boned” machines to the smaller OEM and system builder channels, said Lowe.

He said the arrangement has “big potential for sure” but wouldn't comment on projected sales targets. He added that Legend QDI would be one of the distributor's key vendor partners.

Richard Hattam, QDI's UK regional manager, said initially BCN would be the sole distributor for the company in Australia, but the vendor's local strategy would be reviewed in six months.

For its fiscal year 2001/02, Legend reported turnover and a net profit of HK$9.96 billion (US$1.27 billion) and HK$435 million ($US55.75 million) respectively. The company is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The company recently launched China's first the Legend Supercomputer – a machine that is kitted out with 272GB of RAM and a 6TB hard disk.