This week I took a deep dive with Lenovo. It’s changing into more and more clear that Lenovo is not like another laptop firm in distinctive and impressively highly effective methods. First, Lenovo is the one genuinely international laptop firm with management within the U.S. and China. Second, it owns IBM’s PC firm, which successfully based the WinTel PC business that’s dominant worldwide. And eventually, apart from Apple, Lenovo is the one laptop firm that appears to get that shopper units embrace smartphones immediately, and it is usually in that market.
Let’s discover Lenovo’s distinctive market benefits level by level this week.
The one actually international participant
China and the U.S. aren’t getting alongside nicely now, which is problematic given their respective economies lead the world. This dust-up shouldn’t be a combat both nation is about to win with out catastrophic injury to each, and the combat seems to be mutually damaging, as nicely. Nonetheless, China nonetheless leads in manufacturing, and the U.S. leads in innovation. An organization that might bridge this divide has a major aggressive benefit.
Lenovo is the corporate closest to being like Switzerland within the tech market. It may possibly function independently of all three nations (together with Taiwan) but preserve sufficient presence and affect to be nicely regarded in all three nations. These benefits profit multinationals, making Lenovo a really perfect associate for these companies struggling by means of the dispute.
As well as, the experience Lenovo has developed working successfully throughout borders makes it the best associate for an organization in China or the U.S. (Taiwan’s points with China go deeper) that wishes to additionally function throughout borders throughout this battle.
Lastly, given most manufacturing remains to be occurring for the tech market in China and Taiwan, Lenovo’s distinctive relationship with each ought to guarantee they will get components in the course of the logistics nightmare we’re all experiencing. This benefit makes Lenovo doubtlessly extra dependable than its friends when filling orders in a well timed method.
The IBM PC firm
Particularly, Lenovo’s many years of expertise within the PC market give it two highly effective benefits due to its acquisition of the IBM PC firm. First, it has extra institutional expertise in its market than another vendor. Second, the ThinkPad model is the one PC model that really competes at Apple’s stage as a premium model.
These two facets guarantee a better stage of name loyalty to ThinkPad and associated traces. Lenovo’s expertise helps it keep away from remaking previous errors over the many years that this now blended unit was in enterprise. These distinctive benefits have allowed Lenovo to get pleasure from higher buyer retention and progress than lots of its friends, and it’s a substantial a part of the corporate’s aggressive benefit.
Smartphones
When the smartphone wave hit, most PC firms tried to get into the market and failed spectacularly, whereas Apple got here near taking up the market totally. Lenovo is the one firm that approached the market by shopping for Motorola’s smartphone firm, thus gaining the organizational expertise they wanted to compete within the section.
The Motorola acquisition began ugly as a result of it had been on the ropes when Google purchased it, after which Google additional broken the division critically. However Lenovo has slowly been rebuilding the Motorola unit, and it’s now performing competitively with distinctive designs and capabilities and rising integration with Lenovo’s PC enterprise. I not too long ago accomplished testing the Lenovo 14T monitor for PCs to seek out that it’ll additionally work with the present smartphone. Coupled with a wi-fi mouse and keyboard, it may well grow to be a reputable cloud-connected PC different with respectable display screen dimension and efficiency.
Lenovo has additionally been engaged on head-mounted shows for a number of years, and it’s the closest to a breakthrough that might redefine smartphones and PCs sooner or later, very similar to Apple was earlier than iPhone.
Wrapping up: Lenovo for the win
Lenovo is a singular firm that exists as a singular international entity with management predominantly in China and the U.S. and worldwide market penetration. Its different benefits embrace the distinctive business-focused ThinkPad model and Motorola, making it the one PC firm apart from Apple with an iconic product model and a major cellphone presence. These distinctive benefits place Lenovo nicely for the long run, however they make Lenovo a really perfect associate for anybody eager to penetrate U.S. markets from China or vice versa or for firms that additionally exist throughout these geographies.
Lastly, due to this breadth and the post-Steve Jobs Apple’s incapability to innovate, these capabilities make Lenovo the probably to shake up the private expertise market of the long run.
As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, Rob offers regional and international firms with steerage in easy methods to create credible dialogue with the market, goal buyer wants, create new enterprise alternatives, anticipate expertise modifications, choose distributors and merchandise, and apply zero greenback advertising. For over 20 years Rob has labored for and with firms like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Devices, AMD, Intel, Credit score Suisse First Boston, ROLM, and Siemens.
