Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

(original title: CES Note: what do Lenovo's American executives think of competition in the notebook market? )

Strictly speaking, Lenovo does not participate in CES, but they occupy an important place on this stage every year.

As a global PC giant, CES is the most important exhibition activity of Lenovo every year. Every year, Lenovo sends a large number of executives to Las Vegas to launch many new hardware products in CES, participate in the selection of important CES awards, announce important technical cooperation, and conduct many business negotiations. But unlike other exhibitors, Lenovo does not have an exhibition at the Las Vegas Convention and Exhibition Center. They always choose to pack a whole bar or restaurant in the most crowded Sands Convention and Exhibition Center, and the location is on the way for the attendees.

The advantage of this alternative approach is that almost all participants will pass through Lenovo's "exhibition area" to see the new products released by Lenovo. Media from all over the world are also more willing to come to the Lenovo exhibition area, while reporting new products, they can also take a sip of water and recharge the "exhibition area" transformed by bars and restaurants.

As in previous years, Lenovo has released a number of new hardware products on CES this year, expanding the design and use of notebooks. In this year's new products, the most eye-catching is the world's first dual OLED screen notebook Yoga Book 9i, with hinges connected to two 13.3in screens to deal with a variety of use scenarios; it is worth mentioning that in the CES selection of CNN, ZDNET, GearPathol and many other American media, Lenovo OLED dual-screen notebook Yoga Book 9i has won the best notebook award.

Equally impressive products are the hinge dual-screen notebook ThinkBook Plus Twist, which has a normal OLED screen and a color ink screen that rotates to switch between different needs, and the business notebook ThinkBook 16p Gen4 with a variety of magnetic modules, including supplementary lights, 4G network modules and 4k camera modules for HD video calls and product presentation. In addition, Motorola, owned by Lenovo, has partnered with ThinkPad to create ThinkPhone phones, which incorporate the classic materials and designs of ThinkPad on the basis of motorcycle phone hardware, as well as ThinkPad enterprise user security features and a full set of mobile office components.

Because the domestic epidemic prevention and control measures have just been lifted, Lenovo did not send large troops from China to CES this year, but Qiao Jian, the global CMO, brought the product manager of the new product to the booth to meet and display with the global media. To fully restore the scale of participation in the past, we have to wait for next year's CES.

After watching the launch, I took a bottle of water from the Lenovo booth and sat down with Tom Butler, Lenovo's executive director of commercialization and product manager in the United States. Butler is a veteran of the consumer electronics industry and has even forgotten how many times he has participated in the CES. He only remembers that he first joined the CES in 1999, when he was still working at Ericsson.

Butler worked for Ericsson and Cisco before joining Lenovo in 2005. And the timing of his joining Lenovo is also very interesting, because when he was interviewed, the company was still IBM, and when he joined, it became Lenovo.

"after the interview, they called me and said,'We've decided to hire you, but there's a change. We've been acquired by Lenovo. Would you like to come again?' I thought, 'what kind of company is Lenovo, I've never heard of'. However, I decided to join. I have worked for an American company before, and I have also worked for an European company, and I have never worked for a Chinese company. It was a very interesting experience. "

Butler soon discovered that the Chinese company had a global perspective. "I didn't feel a cultural clash [after Lenovo's acquisition]. They did this very well, giving the US department a lot of autonomy. Lenovo is a company with a global perspective, realizing the complementarity of Chinese and US departments in manufacturing, distribution and research and development, which has become a big advantage for us."

He admitted that the COVID-19 epidemic has brought great challenges to internal cooperation among international giants such as Lenovo. Because of the difficulty of international travel, teams such as China, the United States and Japan (the R & D base of ThinkPad) are unable to communicate face-to-face and have to rely entirely on remote video to collaborate. For the hardware R & D department, this situation is particularly challenging, directly slowing down the pace of product development. However, other consumer electronics multinationals face the same problem.

Over the past 17 years, Lenovo has acquired the IBM PC business, Motorola Mobility business and IBM server business, turning it from a Chinese company into a global electronics giant. Lenovo's global market share was 25.2% in the third quarter of last year, while HP and Dell ranked second and third with 18.7% and 17.7%, respectively, according to Gatner.

Lenovo ranks first in almost every major market. In western Europe, which is also a developed market, Lenovo's share is as high as 31%, while HP and Dell rank second with 24.7% and 13.8%.

In Butler's view, "Lenovo has been able to win in other markets such as Europe because we know more about the needs of our users. Our PC product line is divided into three lines: large enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises and the consumer market. The products of each line are carefully tailored to the positioning needs of their own users, and the quality, performance and design are the best in order to have the first place in the market."

As a product manager, he gave specific examples to explain that in Lenovo's PC product line, ThinkPad is aimed at large enterprise users with IT administrators, ThinkBook is aimed at small and medium-sized enterprise users, while ThinkBook Plus is a Pro version that emphasizes innovation, and Yoga is for consumer users. Even with ChromeOS, which accounts for half of the US education market, Lenovo has a head start in this area.

He stressed that compared with Hewlett-Packard and Dell, "We are the only company that has an end-to-end ecosystem of phones, laptops, workstations and servers across mobile, desktop and cloud. Even compared to Apple, we still have a data center business."

I reminded him that Apple's desktop and mobile have the same user experience, while Lenovo's desktop and mobile use Windows and Android respectively, and the consistency of user experience is difficult to achieve. Butler acknowledged that Lenovo's hardware platform spans Windows, Android and ChromeOS operating systems, but "We work very closely with partners such as Microsoft, Google and Intel to deliver the best user experience possible in the industry."

Speaking of the ThinkPhone released by Motorola, Butler introduced that it is a product created by the cooperation between Motorola and ThinkPad, the two product teams have jointly determined the needs of large enterprise users for mobile office, remote control, data security, and ruggedness, using the classic design and body materials of ThinkPad in motorcycle phones, and equipped with ThinkShield security functions to ensure that administrators of large enterprises can remotely control hardware and data security.

Speaking of Lenovo's simultaneous release of notebooks with folding screen, hinged double screen and rotary screen, Butler believes that these new screen designs are still in the initial stage of exploration, and it is difficult to say which kind of design will become the mainstream of the PC industry in the future. Lenovo uses these new products to set new product forms for the industry and explore new user scenarios. But he stressed that the newly designed notebooks have undergone rigorous durability tests, and users do not need to worry about the durability of the screen, especially the ThinkPad product line designed for harsh use environments.

Butler doesn't believe in the post-PC era at all. "the industry has been talking about the 'post-PC era' for a long time, but after COVID-19 came, sales of laptops and tablets soared because everyone needed a laptop to browse the Internet, work remotely or study. Laptops are really fully equipped with these functions. Who else is going to talk about the 'post-PC' era?"

Indeed, global PC shipments grew by nearly 5 per cent and 10 per cent in 2020 and 2021, according to Gartner, wiping out the decline of the previous five consecutive years. However, after entering 2022, as the hardware demand brought about by the epidemic gradually faded, global PC shipments declined again.

Global PC shipments fell by 19.5% in the third quarter of last year. Lenovo's global PC shipments fell 15% year-on-year in the quarter, but it was already the smallest decline among competitors such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Apple and Acer. As a result, Lenovo's global market share has grown from 23.9% to 25.2%.

Butler believes that as most consumers own the PC, market shipments begin to decline, but the upgrade cycle will grow again in the past. The upgrade cycle of the commercial PC market is about three to four years, which is equivalent to about 25% of the annual upgrade demand. Consumers will buy again sooner or later, and demand will pick up sooner or later, so what Lenovo needs to do is to prepare its products and maintain its competitive edge.

Although Lenovo leads shipments in almost all markets in the world, it only ranks third in the US market. In the third quarter of last year, Lenovo had a market share of only 16%, on a par with apple, but lagged significantly behind Dell and hp with 26.8% and 23.2%.

From Butler's point of view, this is normal. As an American, he said with a smile, "the American people do prefer local manufacturers, just as Chinese consumers support national brands and Lenovo dominates the Chinese market. This is a natural emotional binding." When Dell Hewlett-Packard goes to China, it will face the same challenges as Lenovo does in the United States, just like playing at home and away. Lenovo in the United States, is in the home of others to challenge, the competition will naturally be more fierce. "

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.