Chinese industry
From guard shack to global giant
How did Lenovo become the world’s biggest computer company?
Jan 12th 2013 | BEIJING
| from the print edition
Gobbling up an entity double its size was never going to be easy. But cultural differences made it trickier. IBMers chafed at Chinese practices such as mandatory exercise breaks and public shaming of latecomers to meetings. Chinese staff, said a Lenovo executive at the time, marvelled that: “Americans like to talk; Chinese people like to listen. At first we wondered why they kept talking when they had nothing to say.” Two Western chief executives failed to turn things around. By 2008, as the financial crisis raged, Lenovo was bleeding red ink.
Given all this, its recent success is startling. In the third quarter of last year, Gartner, a consultancy, declared Lenovo the world’s biggest seller of PCs, ahead of Hewlett-Packard (HP). Even if HP briefly recaptures the lead in the fourth quarter, the trend seems clear: Lenovo is on a roll (see chart 1). It is number one in five of the seven biggest PC markets, including Japan and Germany. Its mobile division is poised to leapfrog Samsung to grab the top spot in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. This week it made a splash at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with what PC World called “bullish bravado and a seemingly bottomless trunk” of enticing new products.
Lenovo’s rebound raises several questions. How did the firm recover from disaster? Is its new strategy sustainable? And does its rise signal the emergence of China’s first world-class brand?
Lenovo’s recovery owes much to a risky strategy, dubbed “Protect and Attack”, embraced by the firm’s current boss. After taking over in 2009, Yang Yuanqing moved swiftly. Keen to trim the bloat he inherited from IBM, Mr Yang cut a tenth of the workforce. He then acted to protect its two huge profit centres—corporate PC sales and the China market—even as he attacked new markets with new products.
When Lenovo bought IBM’s corporate PC business, it was rumoured to be a money-loser. Some whispered that Chinese ineptitude would sink IBM’s well-regarded Think PC brand. Not so: shipments have doubled since the deal, and operating margins are thought to be above 5%.
An even bigger profit centre is Lenovo’s China business, which accounts for some 45% of total revenues. Amar Babu, who runs Lenovo’s Indian business, thinks the firm’s strategy in China offers lessons for other emerging markets. It has a vast distribution network, which aims to put a PC shop within 50km (30 miles) of nearly every consumer. It has cultivated close relationships with its distributors, who are granted exclusive territorial rights.
Conquering India
Mr Babu has copied this approach in India, tweaking it slightly. In China, the exclusivity for retail distributors is two-way: the firm sells only to them, and they sell only Lenovo kit. But because the brand was still unproven in India, retailers refused to grant the firm exclusivity, so Mr Babu agreed to one-way exclusivity. His firm will sell only to a given retailer in a region, but allows them to sell rival products.
In this way, Lenovo cultivates loyal brand ambassadors, who also give timely feedback on which products and features consumers like. That allows designers to speed up product-development cycles. The firm’s first smartphone flopped, but paved the way for a flurry of hits.
Buoyed by success in corporate PCs and China, Lenovo has spent heavily to expand its share of the global PC market, especially in emerging markets. The brand is universally known in China; not so elsewhere. Spending on promotion, branding and marketing rose by $248m in the year ending in March 2012 (though the firm will not reveal the full amount).
Acquisitions help, too. In 2011 Lenovo bought Medion, a European electronics firm, for $738m, which doubled its share of the German PC market. The same year it spent $450m to enter a joint venture with NEC that made it the largest PC firm in Japan. In 2012 it paid $148m to buy CCE, Brazil’s biggest computer firm. It is also opening factories in markets, including America, where it is surging.
To focus on PCs, Mr Yang’s predecessor sold Lenovo’s smartphone arm for $100m in 2008. Mr Yang bought it back for twice as much the next year. He believes that PCs and other devices will converge, so knowledge of one area will breed expertise in the other. He may be right. Smartphone sales are red hot in China, and Lenovo is now selling mobiles and tablets in several emerging markets. Fourteen quarters in a row, Lenovo has grown faster than the overall PC industry, which shrank by 8% last quarter. A year and a half ago, the firm held double-digit PC market shares in a dozen countries; today, it does so in 34.
Alas, there is a tiny problem with Protect and Attack: the attack part is largely unprofitable. In most markets outside China, Lenovo’s mobile phones, tablets and consumer PCs (as opposed to corporate sales of ThinkPads) lose money.
“Profit is the long-term goal,” says Mr Yang, “but it helps to have a large revenue base.” 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. Wong Wai Ming, the firm’s chief financial officer, is confident Lenovo will eventually double its pretax profit margin of 2%.
The long game
In 2009 Mr Yang persuaded the board to give him four years to show results. If allowed to invest, he promised to turn a $226m annual loss into a profit; in fact, the firm posted a profit of $164m last quarter. He vowed to lift annual revenues, then around $15 billion, past $20 billion; they are now $30 billion (see chart 2). He also said he would raise Lenovo’s global market share from 7% to double digits; it is now close to 16%.
Lenovo does not simply churn out cheap goods. It is spending heavily on branding, distribution, manufacturing and product development. And alongside its cheap gizmos are many mid-range and some premium gadgets, such as the Yoga, a laptop that cleverly converts into a tablet.
On January 6th the firm announced a reorganisation: Lenovo Business Group will make things for cost-conscious consumers, while the new Think Business Group will chase the premium segment. Mr Yang wants the Think brand to compete with Apple; he plans to open fancy showrooms like Apple’s.
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.
Some credit must go to Liu Chuanzhi, the chairman of Legend Holdings, a Chinese investment firm from which Lenovo was spun out. Legend still holds a stake, but Lenovo shares trade freely in Hong Kong. Mr Liu, one of those who schemed in the guard shack, has long dreamed that Legend Computer (as Lenovo was known until 2004) would become a global star.
The firm is strikingly unChinese in some ways. English is the official language. Many senior executives are foreign. Top brass and important meetings rotate between two headquarters, in Beijing and Morrisville, North Carolina (where IBM’s PC division was based), and Lenovo’s research hub in Japan. Only after giving two foreigners a try did Mr Liu push for a Chinese chief executive: his protégé Mr Yang.
Mr Yang, who spoke little English at the time of the IBM deal, moved his family to North Carolina to immerse himself in American ways. Foreigners at Chinese firms often seem like fish out of water, but at Lenovo they look like they belong. One American executive at the firm praises Mr Yang for instilling a bottom-up “performance culture”, instead of the traditional Chinese corporate game of “waiting to see what the emperor wants”.
Still, the firm has some way to go. It is far too reliant on one market, China. Global investors will not tolerate its meagre profits for ever; some are already grousing. And its global marketing push, which targets go-getting youngsters, is a work in progress.
Its slogan in English is not bad: “Lenovo: for those who do”. The firm sponsored the Beijing Olympics, is an official partner of America’s National Football League and has commissioned adverts by a director of James Bond films. Still, David Roman, a former HP and Apple executive who is Lenovo’s chief marketing officer, admits that “none of the successful Chinese firms has yet got a global brand, including us”.
Bad timing makes this problem more daunting. Lenovo has managed to get to the top of the PC mountain at precisely the moment when the mountain appears to be crumbling. Industry sales are shrinking as PCs are made obsolete by other devices. HP has even mooted quitting the business altogether. Some say Lenovo’s costly global expansion will end in tears.
Mr Yang disagrees. Indeed, he shows an unfashionable faith in PCs, which are still 85% of Lenovo’s revenues. They will keep evolving, he insists, citing the Yoga. Inventive firms can still profit from them. He gushes about a “PC+” approach, now being tried in China, that adds mobiles, tablets and smart televisions to PCs and connects them all with a local cloud.
He also thinks Lenovo has a secret weapon. It has kept a lot of manufacturing in-house (why outsource to Foxconn when you already pay Chinese wages?). Mr Yang believes this in-house expertise gives his firm an edge in product development. But Lenovo must exploit that edge better than it has done so far if it is to compete with a technology powerhouse like Samsung and build a global brand anything like Apple’s.
If Lenovo is to become China’s first world-class brand, it must come up with products that consumers are passionate about. In December, as he was honoured as “Economic Figure of the Year” by China’s national broadcaster, Mr Yang described the task ahead for his firm and country: “My dream is that one day China will be more than a world factory…it will be a global centre for innovation.”
聯想智能手機銷量大增 機遇與挑戰並存
從
全球範圍來看﹐蘋果(Apple Inc.)和三星電子(Samsung Electronics Co.)或許可以說是智能手機市場的主導者﹐但在中國﹐卻殺出一個增長迅猛、危及其領先地位的競爭者。
Lenovo
聯想Ideaphone K860智能手機
由於中國需求旺盛﹐今年第三季度聯想智能手機的銷量較上年同期高出了17倍﹐這說明全球智能手機市場的整體增長不再靠美國或 其他成熟市場推動。此外﹐這還引出了另一個問題：全球智能手機行業是否會出現蘋果和三星電子之外的第三個贏家？目前只有蘋果和三星電子兩家智能手機生產商 實現了強勁利潤。分析人士說﹐儘管前路挑戰重重﹐聯想仍有迎難而上的潛力。
巴克萊(Barclays)負責硬件技術業的董事總經理楊應超 說﹐聯想的優勢在於﹐它中國市場的PC業務很賺錢﹐可為智能手機的擴張提供資金。他說﹐PC業務獲利使得聯想可優先考慮智能手機業務的增長問題﹐而不是盈 利。今年第三季度﹐聯想在中國市場上的PC業務實現了5.9%的營運利潤率。
由於中國 和其它新興市場上初次使用智能手機的用戶有著爆炸性需求﹐全球智能手機市場的格局正在不斷變化﹐這為蘋果和三星電子以外的競爭者帶來了潛在機遇﹐它們可爭 取到足夠的挑戰這兩位巨頭的規模經濟。不過﹐這裡也存在巨大挑戰﹐即廉價智能機在市場上會遭遇激烈的價格競爭﹐原因是市場上有很多競爭者在拼銷量﹐因此可 能面臨長期不盈利的風險。
聯想說﹐自己的智能手機業務目前並不盈利﹐但沒有披露虧損數據。不過據研究機構Gartner的統計﹐聯想佔中 國智能手機市場的份額已從去年第三季度的僅1.7%大幅增至今年第三季度的14.8%﹐僅次於三星電子16.7%的佔比﹐大大領先於蘋果的6.9%。中國 是聯想智能手機銷量最大的市場。Gartner預測聯想將在明年底之前成為中國第一大智能手機生產商。
聯想集團將以1.47億美元收購巴西Digibras
中國個人電腦生產商聯想集團有限公司週三宣佈﹐已達成一項協議﹐2012.8.17
七月二十五日，中國電腦龍頭品牌聯想宣布，將成為美國國家美式足球聯盟（NFL）的贊助商。
成為每年全美收視率最高的NFL美式足球超級盃冠軍賽的贊助商，是每個廠商夢寐以求的品牌曝光機會。
聯想只是力爭上游、想成為全球品牌的新興市場品牌之一。它不再滿足於為西方品牌代工，辛苦賺那三％至八％的微薄毛利，還隨時會被更廉價的對手搶單。......聚焦也很重要。新興市場品牌必須找到一個，可以成為世界級競爭者的市場區隔。聯想聚焦在成為企業客戶的電腦供應商，之後才往一般消費市場擴張。
現在我們弄不清楚 最高經營者在此次的表現所佔的重要份量佔多少
Lex专栏：学习联想好榜样
中国企业迫切希望“走出去”以及不惜代价在全球市场获得一
席之地。以中兴(ZTE)为例：这家电信设备制造商在进军竞争激烈的全球智能手机市场过程中损害了自己的利润率。能源集团中海油(CNOOC)为收购加拿
大的尼克森(Nexen)报出了很高的溢价，即使该交易不太可能带来增值效应。两家公司都能从联想(Lenovo)学到点东西。
个人电脑(PC)制造商联想昨日表示，过去3个月，该公司营收同比增长35%，极为微薄的利润率也有所扩大，营业利润增长近50%。联想并非在向价
值链上游延伸——电脑出货量的增长正在抵消价格不断下跌的影响。利润大幅增长完全在于成本控制。该公司的费用比率同比下降7个百分点，降至10%。做得
好！
还有更多需要努力的地方。尽管联想在PC市场的占有率现在仅略低于全球领军企业惠普(HP)，但联想的营业利润率仅为惠普的四分之一。然而，进步可 能需要时间。发达市场推动了联想最近的增长，这在一定程度上得益于联想收购日本NEC的PC业务和德国的Medion公司。全球下一阶段增长将在很大程度 上来源于利润率较低的新兴市场。
然而，联想试图提升利润的努力没有止步于PC领域。本月，该公司宣布与美国存储服务器公司EMC合作，EMC曾与戴尔(Dell)合作。市场调研机 构伯恩斯坦(Bernstein)指出，即便是最基础的服务器也可以获得13%的毛利率，相当于PC业务的最高水平。更复杂服务器的利润率可能高达 20%，对于一家目前利润率勉强达到这个数字一半多一点的公司而言，这颇具吸引力。
联想进军服务器市场的日子将不会轻松，惠普、IBM和戴尔控制着四分之三的市场份额。但任何一家已证明自己有能力将全球梦想和提升盈利能力结合起来的公司，都值得我们给它一个证明自己的机会。
Lex专栏是由FT评论家联合撰写的短评，对全球经济与商业进行精辟分析
译者/梁艳裳
还有更多需要努力的地方。尽管联想在PC市场的占有率现在仅略低于全球领军企业惠普(HP)，但联想的营业利润率仅为惠普的四分之一。然而，进步可 能需要时间。发达市场推动了联想最近的增长，这在一定程度上得益于联想收购日本NEC的PC业务和德国的Medion公司。全球下一阶段增长将在很大程度 上来源于利润率较低的新兴市场。
然而，联想试图提升利润的努力没有止步于PC领域。本月，该公司宣布与美国存储服务器公司EMC合作，EMC曾与戴尔(Dell)合作。市场调研机 构伯恩斯坦(Bernstein)指出，即便是最基础的服务器也可以获得13%的毛利率，相当于PC业务的最高水平。更复杂服务器的利润率可能高达 20%，对于一家目前利润率勉强达到这个数字一半多一点的公司而言，这颇具吸引力。
联想进军服务器市场的日子将不会轻松，惠普、IBM和戴尔控制着四分之三的市场份额。但任何一家已证明自己有能力将全球梦想和提升盈利能力结合起来的公司，都值得我们给它一个证明自己的机会。
Lex专栏是由FT评论家联合撰写的短评，对全球经济与商业进行精辟分析
译者/梁艳裳
****
WSJ 這篇 "in strifes" 就我們有外商工作經驗者 或多莞爾
聯想蹣跚走向世界
2008年11月04日13:10
就
在2005年時，聯想集團(Lenovo Group Ltd.)還是一家名不見經傳的電腦制造商，只在中國銷售電腦，收購IBM的個人電腦業務讓聯想登上了世界舞台：
現在該公司約有60%的銷售額來自國外，按發貨量統計，
該公司也是全球第四大電腦制造商。
AFP/Getty Images
作為全球第四大電腦廠商，聯想已經落在了競爭對
手之後
手之後
並利用北京奧運會的契機發起了營銷攻勢。
盡管在全球進行了大規模擴張，但它仍落後於其競爭對手。
第三季度聯想的電腦發貨量增長了8%，
但與總體市場近兩倍於此的增幅而言相形見絀。
研究機構Gartner的數據顯示，
聯想在全球市場的份額從1年前的7.8%降到了7.3%。
聯想將於本周四公布季度收益。分析師已降低了對該公司的預期。
比如，摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)預計聯想季度表現疲弱，
並預計聯想本財年淨利潤將下降20%，
這也將是2005年5月收購IBM個人電腦業務以來第一年出現下
聯想現任及前任管理人士稱，收購IBM個人電腦業務伊始，
文化沖突和權力之爭幾乎讓這家中國電腦制造商成為全球化企業的宏
偉策略偏離了方向。
如今該公司的這種雄心必須面對美國和歐洲的經濟困境，
聯想以12.
5億美元收購IBM的個人電腦業務使其獲得了品牌信譽，全球銷售力量和西方的管理技巧。投資者由此希望，聯想在中國的低成本結構將提高此前多年虧損的IBM個人電腦業務的效率。
聯想董事、前首席財務長馬雪征(Mary Ma)說，我們清楚我們不能失敗，這不僅是為了我們，
也是為了所有中國人。他們將我們視為中國企業走向世界的象征，
我們感到了巨大的責任。
在此項交易前，聯想一直保持著軍事化的企業文化。
聯想的總部位於北京西北部一個塵土飛揚的工業園中，
每天廣播中都會播放兩次工間操的旋律。
會議遲到的員工會被罰站在房間前面，其它人員則低頭靜默一分鐘。
在收購完成之後，
聯想主席楊元慶將首席執行長的職位讓給了一位西方人，並將公司的官方語言改為英語，盡管他本人從大學畢業後很少講英語。他強迫自己觀看CNN學習英語，並將家搬到了北卡羅來納州的羅利。聯想營銷高管李嵐(Alice Li)則借了《絕望主婦》(Desperate Housewives)的DVD觀看。
不過，文化沖突依然存在。
2005年底從戴爾公司進入聯想擔任首席執行長的阿梅裡奧(Bill Amelio)有時會對中國同事不願說出他們的想法感到惱火。
這位強壯的前大學摔跤運動員說，你不會希望所有人總是說“好，
好，好”。你希望他們能拍著你的頭頂說，嘿，我有個更好的主意。
電話會議成為了一個災難，因為美國人幾乎完全佔據了會議時間。
聯想人力資源副總裁喬健說，美國人會談個不停，然後他們會說，“你為什麼不想給這次會議增加點價值？”
阿梅裡奧同楊元慶密切合作，進行了兩次大規模重組，裁員2,
400多人，這佔目前該公司全球員工總數的約10%。該公司還將工作職位轉向了低成本地區。台式電腦的研發已轉移到了北京，而聯想的營銷總部則遷到了印度班加羅爾。
盡管IBM的重點是向企業銷售筆記本電腦，
聯想卻在經濟低迷之時仍大力進入競爭激烈的消費者市場。上個月，聯想開始銷售399美元的迷你筆記本電腦IdeaPad S10，這是該公司首次進入高速增長的“上網本”(netbook)市場。
阿梅裡奧說，如果你想吸引下十億電腦用戶，這是一個很好的途徑。
盡管我們加入這個陣營有點晚，但還沒晚到無法參與這場角逐。
與此同時，聯想最大的競爭對手惠普公司(Hewlett-
Packard Co.)正在不斷擴大在國際市場上的份額。蘋果公司(Apple Inc.)重整其Macintosh個人電腦系列。飛速增長的台灣競爭對手宏碁(Acer)收購Gateway Inc.之後，一舉超過聯想成為全球發貨量第三大的個人電腦生產商。
Bloomberg News/Landov
William Amelio
聯想把更多的制造業務轉移到了亞洲以外的新工廠。今年10月，
位於墨西哥Monterrey、
佔地26萬平方英尺的聯想新工廠開始運營。
自與IBM聯姻以來，聯想的全球供應網絡一直是個問題。
聯想負責全球供應鏈的高級副總裁加裡﹒史密斯(Gerry Smith)表示，整個供應網看起來象意大利空心面一樣亂。
戴爾等競爭對手可以在幾天內發貨，聯想的發貨時間有時長達數周，
甚至數月。
但是，調整供應鏈的最初努力曾在公司內部引發強烈反響。
由於阿梅裡奧認為所採取的措施推進不夠快，
他徹掉了2006年擔任聯想供應鏈負責人的劉軍，
讓一位前戴爾管理人士來接替這位廣受歡迎的中國高管。
劉軍被安排暫時休息一段時間，去美國進修。一直以來，他都被看作是一顆冉冉升起的明星。他被從高管職位撤離的消息令公司氣氛驟然緊張起來。另外兩名中國高管不久之後便辭職了。
楊元慶說，中國員工都在猜測公司是否還需要他們。
聯想負責人力資源的副總裁肯﹒迪皮埃特羅(Ken DiPietro)說，
劉軍被撤職引發的沖突對聯想來說是個災難性的時刻。他說，有人開始離職，公司內部也出現了拉幫結派的現象。
事實上，這種緊張從合並之初就開始醞釀。
薪酬是引發爭議的主要因素之一。在收購IBM個人電腦業務之後，很多美國員工的薪酬遠遠超過了中國同行，盡管中國業務是盈利的，而美國業務不盈利。
聯想前首席財務長(CFO)馬雪征說，我當時是CFO，
但我下屬的薪酬比我高得多。
在IBM，基本工資佔薪酬的80%左右，
基於工作業績的獎金佔約20%。這就意味著，美國員工即使沒有實現工作目標，仍然可以獲得不錯的薪酬。對中國的中層管理人員來說，薪酬幾乎完全根據業績來定。
聯想表示，已經縮小了高級管理人員的薪酬結構差別。聯想的總部在巴黎、北京和北卡羅來納州羅利之間輪換。
聯想還採取了一些小措施來縮小東西方文化之間的差別。
蠶蛹已經從北京辦公室餐廳的菜單上消失。容易引起歧義的體育隱喻也被禁止在電話會議中使用。
對沉默所反映情緒的不同理解是另一個問題。
聯想大中華區總裁陳紹鵬說，在不同意會議中所陳述的觀點時，我們會選擇保持沉默。但是美國人會認為我們的沉默表示同意。
這種狀況滋生了“打小報告”的溝通方式，
同時令高層管理人員之間的信任度大打折扣。中國管理人員在會議上保持沉默後，往往會私下向楊元慶或阿梅裡奧抱怨。而美國員工則認為這是“背後下套”。
負責筆記本業務的聯想高級副總裁彼得﹒霍騰休斯(Peter Hortensius)回憶道，
有一次他發現一名中國員工把電腦發貨中一個小質量問題直接告訴了CEO，而沒有先向他報告，他對此感到十分氣憤。霍騰休斯說，我當時就在想“他到底為什麼要在這個問題上背後給我一刀！”
其實，霍騰休斯的同事是努力保持禮貌。在中國公司中，
管理人員經常直接把問題反映給老板，而不是同級別的同事，這樣做的目的是為了維持辦公室內部的和諧。
很多文化差異問題的解決都是在聯想高級管理團隊的20多位高管中
展開的。他們花更多的時間在一起共處，並在會議間隙舉行乒乓球比賽。
去年12月，聯想的高管們在加州拉古納海灘舉行會議，
討論破壞高管間信任度的問題。經過兩天的唇槍舌劍，他們終於達成一致：禁止“背後下套”的行為，並為高管會議制定了新的規則。西方管理者每人的發言時間將被限制在五分鐘，中國高管則可以講10分鐘，而且中途不得被打斷。
Jane Spencer
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