Alibaba to distribute Thinkpads?

This is an odd story. Alibaba can comment here if they want to on whether or not it's likely. The piece comes through Sinocast and I picked it up on Trading Markets. The basic thrust is:

• Lenovo thinks that online distribution of PCs will become more important. That might seem like a "duh" conclusion although I read something the other day suggesting that Dell was going the other way in China.
• They are looking for an online distributor in the mainland.
• Alibaba.com looks like a serious option to them.

Now, Alibaba has no physical infrastructure which would allow it actually to distribute. So, it would be more of a sales channel than real distributor....unless there are plans afoot over in Hangzhou of which we're not yet aware.

Watch this space.