Lenovo set the next breach on a tablet computer

Absrtact: Lenovo put the next breakthrough on the tablet computer. Soon after the launch of the Android Yoga tablet, the launch of the Miix with Windows system, and earlier, Lenovo also listed a few low-end flat including S5000

Lenovo has set the next breach on a tablet computer.

Soon after the launch of the Android Yoga tablet, the launch of the Windows System Miix, and earlier, Lenovo also listed several low-end tablet computer products including S5000. "If you look at this year's PC tablet market share trend, Lenovo in these two areas together in the second place, after." My goal for the team now is to get to the top quickly, which is our first step in smart device strategy. "Lenovo chairman and CEO Yang said this in the second quarter of this year's earnings meeting."

Lenovo has not spoken about its tablet strategy for some time. At the beginning of the year's swearing, Yang gave the tablet computer only 10 million targets, while the smartphone was 50 million. Plus the first half of Lenovo in the flagship mobile phone products K900 on the huge investment, will let the industry has an illusion that the smartphone is the first Lenovo to occupy the position. Lenovo's tablet business has already landed on smartphones in Europe and the US. "The tablet is closer to the PC and it will be part of the PC in the future." For Lenovo, the growth and profitability of the business is likely to be greater. "Because of the proximity of the channel, Lenovo has been selling Tablet PCs and PCs in the same channel around the world," he said.

According to Yang, Yoga tablet is the product that Lenovo LEC (Lenovo) voted to mount. In a way, it's positioned more than a few smartphones and smart TVs previously released.

Confused

But Lenovo's attitude on the tablet was not so firm at first, even in the middle of last year that Lenovo was not particularly clear. "Is it possible for a tablet to become a short-lived product like a netbook, and now it seems impossible to conclude that it certainly brings some value, but does it have that much value?" This is last August, Lenovo China's president Chen Xudong to this reporter's answer.

Peter Hortensius, president of Lenovo think Business group, also expressed a similar view, "although it is foreseeable that the tablet will be surprisingly space in the future, its development in China is not as strong as in the United States." ”

Lenovo put tablets in the same strategic position as smartphones when it released its mobile strategy in early 2012, but in reality the market has not developed as well as expected. At that stage, only Asus, among the traditional PC makers, was aggressively promoting the tablet business, as Google handed over the Nexus 7 of its OEM orders.

An inescapable fact is that Apple is too strong to have a sharp contraction in the ipad's market share until the second quarter of this year, a figure that has remained at around 50% per cent since. "We think there are two markets, one is the ipad and the other is the other," said Schiller, Apple's vice president for product marketing. ”

Lenovo's internal debate over the tablet computer lasted a long time, because Lenovo's technology at the tablet was not so deep that they were not sure enough to make a product that would eat the ipad share. This is not like smart phones, the thousand-yuan smart machine has pulled down the user's demand level, Lenovo in the Low-cost segment can fully utilize its supply chain advantages.

"Why is the PC compatible?" Because it standardizes a lot of parts. But for tablets, I don't know if there are any standardized components in addition to the CPU. Most of the parts are not very good to buy, save one of their own is not so easy. "Chen Xudong said. At this stage, a display panel costs more than 100 dollars.

At this time Lenovo in the "PC" is frantically seeking the scale effect. It moved the management experience of the supply chain on the PC to smartphones, creating what is called a "short chain (faster than an opponent launches a product to form a period of technical advantage)", making Lenovo's smartphone business last year the second in the country. But tablets can not continue this method, considering the input-output ratio, its internal weight naturally not too high.

This is certainly not to say that Lenovo gave up the tablet computer at the time. In his "four-screen integration" strategy, the tablet computer is a very important link, he has on many occasions, smartphones and tablets are two must do business, but the reality is that Lenovo has to wait.

Force

A change in the second half of last year comes from rivals, including Asus and Samsung, who have tweaked their product strategy, increasingly putting tablets and PCs together for sale. Lenovo Russian general manager Li Weichang has told us that some manufacturers completely abandoned such as netbooks such as low-end PC, and the use of tablets to fill the market space, only in the high-end market, the corresponding PC products.

This once made Lenovo a bit passive, especially in the international market. Lenovo had to speed up the internationalization of the tablet, and in the early year of the Lenovo Europe swearing, President Lanci, the European, Middle East and African region, was eager to start their preparations early in order to launch a tablet computer in Europe as soon as possible.

At the same time, the flagship of the Tablet computer project also began quickly, is just released yoga tablet. Yang gave the team two tasks: "One is to make a breakthrough in the product, the other is to build Lenovo's brand image in the tablet market." ”

Of course, the market environment is also in the Lenovo ideal trend to develop, the ipad market share in the year to about 30%, lost a large part of the low-end of the Android tablet computer to eat. The price of spare parts has directly accelerated the development of the market, such as Rui-core micro-China semiconductor companies currently selling chip system prices of only 5 U.S. dollars, only the United States company's price of One-fourth, the display panel also reduced to dozens of U.S. dollars. And the cost of ordinary tablet parts, including memory and Shell, is now at $60 trillion, well below 2011 's $175 trillion.

This is back to Lenovo's familiar track, Bloomberg Businessweek said: "The market is moving away from Apple's ' reality distortion field '." "According to IDC (Internet Data Center), tablets under 150 dollars will account for nearly 35% of the U.S. market next year, much higher than the 25% in 2011.

Users began to choose products with brand awareness, and some Shanzhai vendors were able to offer products below 80 dollars, but sales were not good. Tablets still have a technical hurdle, which is harder to assemble than traditional PCs. Because the components are basically standardized, the PC assembly even needs a screwdriver. And the tablet must be light enough, so engineering and design are essential, and shanzhai firms simply can't afford to do that.

This is a chance for Lenovo. "Our judgment on the tablet is that the market is basically stable, and that Lenovo has become part of the big PC concept," he said. "said Yang. In most of Lenovo's regional markets, the sale of tablets has been rigorously defined in KPIs (key performance indicators), which makes them very active in promoting these products in the channel. Lenovo's tablet has reached 4.8% per cent of its global market share, ranked fourth after Apple, Samsung and Asus, according to IDC.

For Lenovo, another good thing is that the entire traditional PC industry chain is now moving to the tablet computer. Intel has been frantically nurturing the tablet industry chain in Shenzhen after the launch of the Baytrail processor for Tablet PCs. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also made it clear that "the success of smartphones is important for tablets, and tablets are important for the entire PC business, which is important for a larger terminal business." "In Microsoft's priority, tablets have surpassed smartphones.

The problem is that these benefits also apply to other OEMs, including Asus and Dell, which have launched 150-dollar tablet products by Christmas Eve. The ipad Mini 2 and the ipad Air, which Apple has just sold, are more expensive, but the market reaction is not bad, which will put a little pressure on Lenovo.

Yang said his confidence in tablets comes from Lenovo's current product innovation capabilities, as well as business models and supply chain management. He once again referred to "supply chain management", which means that the path of the smartphone will almost certainly be replicated to the tablet computer.

He also deliberately mentioned that Lenovo's manufacturing base in Wuhan has been partially put into production, the mobile phone and tablet computers and other intelligent terminals produced by the development of a base of 100 million units annually. "It will make us more comfortable. "said Yang.