How Lenovo became the world’s biggest computer company

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569398-how-did-lenovo-become-worlds-biggest-computer-company-guard-shack-global-giant

by JumpCrisscross • 14 years ago

45 46 14 years ago

economist.com

shawndumas• 14 years ago

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569398-how-did-leno...

ferrantim• 14 years ago

Good lesson never to rest on one's laurel's. Love stories of number 2's taking over from the market leader.

Retric• 14 years ago

#1 by units not by units * price or profits which are around 2% of sales.

rednukleus• 14 years ago

Yes, #1. As in number of units sold. That's what #1 means.

seunosewa• 14 years ago

Not necessarily.

mbesto• 14 years ago

If I do actually recommend friends to buy a Windows based PC it's usually a Lenovo. They're pretty rock solid. Good on them.

decasteve• 14 years ago

I picked up my first Lenovo (Y580), my first Windows based PC since 2007. Worked great but didn't care for Windows too much. It is now running Ubuntu 12.10 without too much trouble except for mis-reporting the battery life on occasion.

Though much of my decision on buying a laptop rests on how nice the keys feel. I was originally looking at a Samsung laptop but the "feel" was wrong for me.

rayiner• 14 years ago

Me too, but my dad has had a pretty bad experience with his x220s. Anecdotal, obviously, but I'm not sure the quality has kept since the glory days of Think Pads.

notatoad• 14 years ago

Lemons happen. That was true in the 'glory days' of lemons as much as it is now, one user's experience is nothing to go by.

MichaelGG• 14 years ago

Quality's definitely an issue, even with previous model of the Lenovo X series, which I have. Things that were common and easy to replace, like fans, are now buried and more difficult. And it overheats like crazy. An IBM/Lenovo engineer told me that the number of screws used has also gone up significantly.

They're still better than the competition, but the new ThinkPad models are not very interesting. I'm hoping Lenovo will respond to current pressure and release new X and T models that are worth buying.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

What's the quality like on the cheaper non-thinkpad models?

Mindless2112• 14 years ago

I purchased an IdeaPad Z570 early last year -- thus far my only niggle is that they didn't ship any CDs with it. I'm much happier with it than I was with the Dell Vostro that I previously had.

bchjam• 14 years ago

I got a great deal (basically half off) on a well equipped y470 model and aside from minor cosmetic issues (the shiny paint on the top of the body is wearing out on spots where the monitor frame scrapes it when open/closing, and the monitor is a bit more wobbly than on my wife's MBP) I've been very happy with it.

Finding a good deal was pretty easy too, I just checked lenovo's website semi-regularly for a month or 2 until they were discounting something I wanted.

lostlogin4• 14 years ago

Interesting that the Chinese government owns a stake.

igravious• 14 years ago

"Lenovo’s culture is different from that of other Chinese firms. A state think-tank, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, provided the original $25,000 seed capital, and still owns an indirect stake. But those in the know say Lenovo is run as a private firm, with little or no official interference."

lostlogin4• 14 years ago

I don't understand. That says that the Chinese government owns an indirect stake. I took that to mean they own some of the company. How do you read that?

beatgammit• 14 years ago

Really? I was surprised the Chinese government didn't outright own them...

yRetsyM• 14 years ago

Does lenovo compete strongly in the enterprise market? do they have server / storage / data centre technologies?

justincormack• 14 years ago

They make servers but not storage or other technologies.

wmf• 14 years ago

Iomega was just renamed to LenovoEMC or something, so now they have low-end storage.

jisaacstone2• 14 years ago

My wife's parents still use a lenovo desktop from the ~'89 and it works fine. My 2 year old laptop, on the other hand, has had several problems (especially with hibernation/wake-up) and the battery life is and has always been only about an hour.

I know it is just anecdotal, but it put me off the brand (which I was bullish on before).

guard-of-terra6• 14 years ago

Laptops are useless with their hulking mass and short battery life. Netbooks rule the world: they always have three or more hours of battery life and they're so cheap you can replace them if they break. Which they don't. And everything works thanks to proven hardware.

I don't understand anyone buying non-Apple non-netbook laptops.

vetinari• 14 years ago

Some of us prefer not to wait for our computers.

This message was brought to you by Thinkpad T430s.

sp4rki2• 14 years ago

My T420 easily gives me double (sometimes even triple) than your three hours mate. It's very well built so it doesn't break as easily as crappy plastic netbook. Not only is it's hardware "proven" whatever that means, but works extremely well with Linux which is my OS of choice. Oh and almost everything I want to change is easily user replaceable. Probably with the exception of the gpu. And Lenovo provides manuals to do both the easy thinks like changing memory, to medium things like replacing a keyboard (which is a piece of cake), to more complex things like replacing the LCD screen. Oh and 14 inches is not a hulking mass, and it also replaced my desktop. I don't understand Apple fanboys (and I own an iPhone and an iPad)...

lostlogin4• 14 years ago

I read this as saying: buy an Apple netbook. The mythical beast which Steve refused to let live.

meaty3• 14 years ago

WTF are you smoking?

My Lenovo T61 has two batteries (9 cell+ultrabay). I get 8 hours. It's also 5 years old and just doesn't break - it's been dropped, had drinks in it, thrown a couple of times, used in the rain. Plus you could beat an elephant to death with it. The whole thing is build like Wolverine out of the X-Men. Look at the picture - the grey bits are titanium:

http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/img_lib/products...

Compared to my 2010 Macbook Pro which caught fire after 5 months, lasted about 3 hours on battery and had a new logic board after 4 weeks...

tjoff2• 14 years ago

Lenovo makes fantastic laptops as well as poor laptops. Apple is probably the only manufacturer where you can make broad statements about their products.

For all other, you have to at least specify the product line for the statement to mean anything at all.

joenathan• 14 years ago

The Thinkpad is hardly a poor laptop, it's the only laptop certified by NASA for use in space.

http://blog.lenovo.com/products/thinkpad-laptop-nasa-youtube...

IheartApplesDix• 14 years ago

Did IBM sell of Lenovo in anticipation of adopting the much more profitable Trusted Platform paradigm? Now Microsoft as well anticipates abandoning "packaged products," that necessitate years of costly support. But how long can the the castle walls hold?

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/20-01-2012-12-11-21.png

bitwize• 14 years ago

IBM sold off its PC unit to Lenovo to focus on its core competency -- mainframes and large systems.

infinitebeam• 14 years ago

I've had my current Lenovo Y410 Notebook since 2007. Solid performance even after all these years. I recommend only Lenovo to any one who asks.

elteto• 14 years ago

I own a T530 and couldn't be happier, and I say that coming from a MacBook Pro. However two things you have to consider if you buy a Lenovo:

1. Get a Thinkpad, preferably a T series, non-Thinkpad Lenovos are crap, based on personal experience.

2. Expect to do a full reinstall of your system. It comes over bloated with the worst crapware available, to the point that it makes it unusable. Mine couldn't perform Windows updates and Chrome crashed constantly, all of this out of the box. But the mayor offense was including Norton bloatware, that I couldn't just tolerate.

mcartyem• 14 years ago

Why must Lenovo reach a roughly 10% share in each of the target markets to achieve long-term profitability?

"He vows to keep investing, regardless of returns, until the firm reaches a roughly 10% share in each of the target markets. Only with such scale is long-term profitability possible, he insists."

Rickasaurus• 14 years ago

Maybe it has to do with the fact that Lenovo Thinkpad is one of the only premium PC brands. No crapware, just the basics, and quality hardware.

I recently got a ThinkPad W530 because it was the only workstation laptop I could find that supports 32gb of ram. It even came with a Core i7 Extreme Edition CPU! Talk about beastly. Before that I had an X201 which wasn't quite the powerhouse but both have been great performance and stability wise.

The only downside to Thinkpads is the crowded trackpad. Hourly I seem to accidentally to page/up down while coding. However, it's my only complaint and otherwise the Thinkpads are just fantastic.

How Lenovo became the world’s biggest computer company

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