Once an unlikely rival for HP and Apple, Chinese computer maker Lenovo has grown and adapted as quickly as its homeland. Now, with a savvy blend of East and West, it’s poised to be China’s first global brand.
Lenovo is a company the likes of which we’ve never seen. It is a product of Communist China (the government still owns 36% of its parent, Legend Holdings); it is heavily influenced by the democratized West; it boasts an international workforce of 27,000 employees and customers in more than 160 countries.
“This is Lenovo’s moment,” says Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing, 47, a former salesman who once delivered computers by bicycle and is now China’s highest-paid chief executive. (His 2011 salary: $12 million.) Yang calls Lenovo’s strategy “protect and attack,” three words you hear repeatedly at the company’s headquarters in Beijing and its offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Yang spends a third of his time.
Lenovo seeks to protect its core business–the China and enterprise (large-scale commercial and public-sector) markets, which generated about 70% of its $21 billion in revenue last year. On the attack side, he’s pumping Lenovo’s profits–$273 million in 2010–into emerging markets, new product categories (tablets, smartphones, smart TVs), and, of course, the U.S [Source].










Recent Comments