Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang spoke to CNNMoney about his company’s recent acquisition of Motorola from Google today. In the interview, Yang was asked if his goal for Lenovo was to eventually catch up with more established competitors in the mobile space, such as Apple and Samsung.
With Motorola, Lenovo will be the No. 3 smartphone maker worldwide. Do you think your company can catch up with Apple or Samsung, who are still far ahead of you? And how long will it take?
Definitely, over time. Our mission is to surpass them.
Yang says that Lenovo’s smartphones will probably be released under the Motorola banner, a smart branding decision given Motorola’s existing name recognition and popularity in the U.S. and other countries.
The branding choice combined with the infrastructure and personnel from the Moto buyout could help propel the company to the top of the market, but it will be a hard road to the level of success that Yang is after—especially with Apple and Samsung already locked in a fierce, years-long battle for the top spot.
Throughout the interview, Yang continued to note that several decisions still need to be made with regards to how phones will be branded in certain countries and whether the Lenovo name will be associated with Motorola at all. It will certainly be interesting to see how Yang uses the Motorola brand to push Lenovo forward.
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Doesn’t anyone see why Google sold Motorola to Lenovo? This is because Apple was about to break into the Chinese market. Google is doing now what it did in 2008 – it does everything possible to prevent Apple from grabbing the dominant market share in the smartphone market. Google bought Motorola and subsidized it for a few years just to keep it afloat until a Chinese company was ready to purchase it. Now Lenovo will be fighting Apple as Google’s proxy in China, just like Samsung has been fighting Apple on Google’s behalf elsewhere. There’s a lot of bad blood between South Koreans and Chinese, so Samsung would have not made inroads in China like Motorola could and now will. It’s the same old game – Android vs iOS.
Surpass them? At least he’s ambitious.
Marketshare is irrelevant if people only buy your wares because their cheap and you don’t make a profit. As much as Lenovo has done for the ThinkPad and computers in general I don’t think they can duplicate that with smartphones. Apple designs their own operating system for their own hardware. Lenovo can never match that any more than Microsoft could. Apple will continue to be the more profitable company regardless of who makes smartphones because the competition mainly targets the more frugal demographic (the ones who will only purchase low cost phones).
Anyway it’s an ambitious endeavor indeed. I personally look forward to seeing what the landscape looks like I the next few years.
Very hard mission! Good luck!
Apple made good on a target set by Steve Jobs when he originally announced the release of the original iPhone in June of 2007. He wanted the iPhone to take 1 percent of global cellphone market share by the end of 2008. Though Apple’s target was only 1 percent, it was at least strategic, measured, achievable and realistic. None of those attributes can be pinned to Lenovo’s plans.
Soon to be world #3 or not, the sad truth is that the soon to be enlarged Lenovo will be but the next lamb to the slaughter.
If their ThinkPads are any reflection of their soon to be Motorola handset business, they should pull out all stops with regards to compromised hardware. I’ve worked with some lousy ThinkPad branded laptops and been disappointed (E series) Our IT dept learned quick to go with the higher end ThinkPad models or be disappointed with lower res screens (1366×768) and awful touchpads. Leave the low end gear for other vendors. Lenovo has proven they can make nice hardware too (X1 Carbon). Hopefully it will be reflected in their new Moto handsets.