Meet Lenovo's new CEO
Published: 10 Dec 2004 18:25 GMT
How will you handle the two companies' manufacturing operations?
We have manufacturing, which is our IIPC [International Information Products Company], and Lenovo has their manufacturing. Both of those plants -- Lenovo has got a capacity of five million; we've got a capacity of more than 10 million -- we're using the capacity and they are as well.
The reason our competitors are going to throw out a lot of FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] about this is none of them manufacture anything. They do some minor assembly. None of our competitors build notebooks. They buy them all from ODMs [original design manufacturers, basically third-party designers and manufacturers] and they do minor assembly in "plants" that they have around the world.
In this case, think about IIPC as one supplier -- we, IBM, own it today and we, Lenovo, will own it in the future -- to our new company and Lenovo manufacturing as another supplier to our new company. By the way, there could be other companies who are ODMs who could be suppliers. So that integration is actually pretty straightforward.
The tough part of the integration, which is a big opportunity, is how do we consolidate our purchasing so that we're now having one voice to Intel instead of two and one voice to Microsoft instead of two? I've spoken to Paul Otellini (Intel's president), and we have spoken with Microsoft already and we'll go through the list... of key suppliers. They're all excited about this, because they see it's an opportunity for a lot of growth, which of course is going to help them.
What of Lenovo's relationship with Sanmina-SCI, which manufactures IBM desktops?
We have a great partnership with Sanmina.
How will the new Lenovo position its two brands, Lenovo and IBM, initially?
The only place we have any (brand) conflict whatsoever is in China. Lenovo is not sold in the United States, etc., so we're going to continue with IBM. We're going to continue with ThinkPad with no change whatsoever [in the United States]. In China, we will continue with IBM and ThinkPad and with Lenovo [brands]. IBM and ThinkPad will be positioned at the high-end corporate market... and Lenovo is positioned [for] small and medium [businesses]. We do have an overlap in part of the corporate market that we'll have to resolve, and we'll do that before we get to the closing.
It's important to resolve it, because, as I said, we have this great market position that we don't want to lose. The way to think about it is we are number one in notebooks in China, and they are number one in desktops in China. Our [position] is corporate, and theirs is corporate and small and medium business and individuals.
Are you going to start selling Lenovo-brand PCs in the United States and Europe at some point?
That's the next piece. Every customer that's buying [now] is going to keep buying ThinkPad and keep buying everything else. The next opportunity for us is to say, 'Lenovo has fantastic products.' The IBM products are already everyplace in the world. Lenovo has fantastic products. How do we move those products into the rest of the world? Already our teams are doing evaluations. We'd like to show you some of the Lenovo [products].
It's stuff that is very, very targeted at [the smaller customers in] the small and medium business [niche] and at individuals. I think we can look at some combinations of things.
The Lenovo brand will be an important PC brand in the future without any question. We are driving that.
Previous
Did you find this article useful?
147 out of 337 people found this useful
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
Full Talkback thread
1 comment
