Author: Ren Shangkun
Source: Business People (ID: biz-leaders)
A few days ago, a user certified as an employee of Lenovo Group posted information on the workplace social platform, "Lenovo's own mobile phone brand Savior mobile phone business was cut across the board. Only Motorola Mobility, which was acquired for $2.9 billion in 2014, remains. ”
Several domestic media also confirmed the news from relevant people. According to recent foreign media Android Authority reports, Lenovo spokespeople revealed that Lenovo will shut down its savior series mobile phones.
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Eight months ago, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing was interviewed by China Entrepreneur, and he mentioned the mobile phone business at the time, saying that the mobile phone business is very healthy. This is for Lenovo's data from the previous fiscal year. But that didn't save Lenovo phones.
The Rescuer series was released in 2020, focusing on game mobile phones, and wants to take advantage of the outbreak of mobile games to make a breakthrough with e-sports. From the sluggish sales of major e-commerce platforms, it is not difficult to understand the great retreat situation faced by the rescuer series.
Lenovo mobile phone can be said to be early in the morning, and it has not yet caught up with the episode.
From PC to mobile, mobile phones bear the strategic direction of Lenovo's diversification, but also from end-to-end horizontal expansion, Lenovo's emerging businesses, such as cloud, AI, etc. are also built on hardware facilities. In Lenovo's planning, the future transformation method is "device + cloud", which includes not only PCs, but more importantly, mobile devices, such as mobile phones and smart terminals, which will exist as the foundation.
Liu Chuanzhi and Yang Yuanqing both valued Lenovo's mobile phone business. As a facet, Lenovo mobile phones have also become a window to observe Lenovo.
In November 2016, at the Wuzhen Summit, Yang Yuanqing said on social media that he agreed with Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong at the dinner that as representatives of China's manufacturing industry, Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi will work together to be the top 3 in the global mobile phone market.
Before that, market research agency IDC data showed that by 2015, Lenovo's ranking in China fell out of the top five for the first time. After that, several companies had their own troubles. So what's the trouble with Lenovo?
Yang Yuanqing has always felt that the outside world is misreading Lenovo, "The problem now is that it does not grasp the essence of Lenovo and does not grasp the focus of Lenovo's strategy." Lenovo mobile phone is a global business, which is different from most Chinese mobile phone manufacturers. ”
In early June 2015, Lenovo underwent a major personnel change, with the departure of Liu Jun, executive vice president of Lenovo, president of the mobile business group and chairman of the management committee of Motorola. From the perspective of the group's business exposure, this is also regarded as a watershed.
Faced with the decline, Yang Yuanqing once criticized the mobile business, "I told you several times last year, to wake up, you can't wake up with a hammer, it's too slow, and you're missing the opportunity." He bluntly said that the mobile business led by Liu Jun missed the opportunity several times.
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After several turns, it is necessary to trace the development trajectory of Lenovo mobile phones.
Lenovo first made mobile phones in 2002. Yes, it's early. Lenovo once set a number of firsts, including the first domestically developed GSM mobile phone, the first 3G OPhone mobile phone supporting TD-SCDMA, etc. On the eve of the "smartphone", Lenovo also launched a number of products. 2010 is a cross-era year for Lenovo, and Le Phone is an Android smartphone launched after Lenovo announced its mobile Internet strategy. In 2011, Lenovo reorganized the MIDH business group, and Le Phone disappeared from the user's sight, and began to switch to low-cost mobile phones through operator channels.
Among them, there are also some episodes -
On April 20, 2001, Lenovo Group's "Employee Oath Conference" in the new fiscal year, the slogan of "New Century, New Lenovo" sounded in the sky. Yang Yuanqing, who has also just been appointed CEO, announced Lenovo's three-year plan from 2001 to 2004:
The pledge meeting is a sign of Lenovo's official launch of "transforming from a hardware manufacturer that simply produces computers to a full-service IT service provider". Yang Yuanqing promised that "Lenovo will take the Internet as the core, take comprehensive customer orientation as the principle, meet the needs of families, individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, and large industries as the goal, and build our diversified business from the two dimensions of products and services."
Guided by this programme, two remarkable events have occurred. At the end of 2004, Lenovo announced the acquisition of IBM's computer business. Lenovo begins setting up its headquarters in New York and operations centers in Beijing and North Carolina.
The above-mentioned Lenovo has been involved in mobile phones since the early 2000s by establishing Lenovo Mobile Technology Co., Ltd. as a joint venture with Xiamen Xiahua Electronics, a second-rate manufacturer in China. In 2005, the joint venture was bought for the remaining shares for 72 million yuan.
After bringing IBM under its wing, Lenovo made a series of sorties, one of which was an intriguing deal from Lenovo Mobile. In January 2008, Lenovo Group announced that it would resell its mobile phone business for US$100 million to a private equity fund led by Hony Investment. "The decision to sell was made in anticipation of significant capital investment in the mobile phone business."
On November 27, 2009, Lenovo announced the purchase of Lenovo Mobile for about $200 million.
I poured my second hand, and in less than two years, I spent an extra small goal, a beautiful knife.
Yang Yuanqing said that while Lenovo's global PC business continues to develop steadily, mobile Internet is regarded as an important strategy in the future. Ten years a reincarnation. In the early morning of January 30, 2014, Lenovo confirmed another big event: the acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.9 billion.
Motorola was sold by Google at a three-fold discount; Lenovo obtained a patent license from this long-established mobile phone company and partnered with global operators. Equally important, there are more immediate data, combined with Motorola's market share, Lenovo has become the world's third largest smartphone manufacturer. At the beginning, Lenovo also ranked third in the world through IBM's computer business.
Lenovo mobile phone got Yang Yuanqing platform, product lines and organizations are constantly changing.
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2014 was the year Lenovo mobile phones climbed to the top. This gave Yang Yuanqing a certain confidence. That year, Lenovo almost did not launch a flagship machine in China, and digestion and absorption of Motorola became the main task. Yang Yuanqing said that the reason why he pressed the Chinese market was because the competition was too fierce, "There are many places overseas where it is easier to make money, why not focus on overseas?" "Of course, I expect immediate results from the first investment, but this is impossible, and the country is still the most competitive market."
One environment at the time was that the Chinese market accounted for 30% of the global mobile phone market share, and Lenovo Mobile 90% of its business was overseas. First overseas, then China is the strategic direction that has been set.
According to media reports, it was also on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month of this year, Yang Yuanqing had a meal with Chen Xudong, Chang Cheng and four others, and proposed that Lian wanted to be an "Internet brand". Chen Xudong was responsible for the specific preparations. He has worked at Lenovo for 23 years, with a sales background, and has not been exposed to the terminal business before. On April 1 of the following year, ZUK was founded.
There are many brand series, and in the smartphone sector alone, Lenovo has launched multiple brand series such as Le Phone, VIBE, Lemon, ZUK and Savior, and there are multiple sub-series named by letters under each series. Lenovo mobile phone has experienced several executive changes.
Over the years, Lenovo has been on the cusp of the wave. Yang Yuanqing said that many opportunities were missed.
In 2009, Lenovo spent $200 million to buy back the mobile business it sold, and the reason for buying back was the gradual rise of mobile Internet and 3G.
In 2010, the domestic mobile phone industry was surging. Lenovo claims to have launched a Le Phone that benchmarks the iPhone. That spring, Liu Chuanzhi said at a press conference that to fight the iPhone, "we must try to maintain the same level as it or surpass it."
After the launch of Le Phone, users can only purchase this product in Lenovo stores and Lenovo business halls (contract machines). Later, Lenovo seized the 2B business of providing contract machines to operators. Together with Motorola, Lenovo has a short-lived glory in the country.
In 2015, a trendy concept called "Internet thinking" became popular. Lenovo began to move to the open market channel. Yang Yuanqing asked business departments to have "Internet thinking". Before that, operators could probably account for 89% of Lenovo's sales share. In mid-2014, the three major operators gradually eliminated subsidies. According to Caijing, in 2012, at least 20 million of Huawei's stable business disappeared due to the reduction of operator customized machines.
In June 2018, Lenovo's official micro release titled "Countless people ask, why is Lenovo mobile phone making a comeback?" Today, Lenovo gave the answer", Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing said, "In Lenovo's overall strategy, the Chinese mobile phone market is very important, and we will rebuild the Chinese market." "To make a mobile phone, Lenovo is serious."
At that time, Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor and other domestic manufacturers were fighting inextricably. In the three years from 2015 to 2018, the domestic market share of Lenovo mobile phones fell from 5.3% to 0.4%. Liu Chuanzhi was also saddened that the mobile phone business was not done well when he encountered the "5G voting door" controversy that year.
According to Lenovo Group's 2017/18 annual report, Lenovo's mobile business lost $463 million.
In an internal speech in October 2016, Yang Yuanqing said, "If we can develop well in overseas markets, it will be very helpful for us to win the war in China." Later, he said in Wuzhen that Lenovo ranked in the top five in market share in more than 30 countries.
The last five years were accompanied by personnel changes. Lenovo veteran Liu Jun left in June 2015 and was replaced by Chen Xudong. In early November 2016, Chen Xudong left his post, and Qiao Jian, the former head of human resources of Lenovo Group, took over the mobile business. Chen Zeng said, "Lenovo has never understood what consumer goods are, mobile phones are authentic consumer goods, but PCs are industrial products." ”
Turning to China for a few years, Lenovo's mobile department reorganized, also took the people-friendly route, launched a lot of "hundred yuan machines", the Z5s listed at the end of 2018, the lowest price is only about 900 yuan. E-sports fever, Lenovo savior is here. Motorola also plays the cost-effective card in Latin America, and the Moto G8 is priced at 1299 reais (about 1955 yuan) in Brazil. In order to impact the high-end, Motorola has produced a series of folding machines since 2020, and there is no climate.
Lenovo has been lacking a staple product that is both good and popular in a wide range of markets. Later, ZUK CEO Chang Cheng took over the banner and said, "ZUK wants to make a good product for Lenovo, if the user evaluates ZUK is too bad, it will not save Lenovo at all, but if the evaluation is good, there is still a chance." At the end of 2019, Changcheng left and joined Xiaomi.
This is a piece of high ground that Lenovo has not won for 20 years. Lenovo won't give up. In an interview, Luca Rossi, executive vice president of Lenovo Group, described Lenovo's future development plan for mobile phones, "Lenovo has the opportunity to become a leader in folding mobile phones and can continue to gain market share in China." At the performance meeting, Yang Yuanqing said that he would fully surpass Samsung in 2020. At the end of February 2023, Lenovo displayed its scroll-screen mobile phone for the first time at the Mobile World Congress.
The wind is up and down, how else can Lenovo save Lenovo mobile phones?
*Title image purchased from Visual China