Lenovo and Ericsson pair up for embedded HSPA

More on Lenovo’s shift in mobility – the company has revealed its chosen Ericsson to supply embedded HSPA modems for its laptops. Good news for Ericsson – it’s its first customer for the devices.

The pair said “select Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks” will come packing HSPA inside, but didn’t give away which models will be included although Ericsson did say the first so-called “mobile broadband” laptops will be out early this year. According to Ericsson, by 2010, 100 million laptops will come with built-in HSPA.

It will be interesting to see whether Lenovo will strike deals with operators in the same way that Dell has with Vodafone, or to leave the modem unlocked for the consumer to choose the operator with the best deal for them. Fingers crossed for option two.