Protect And Attack: Lenovo’s New Strategy

Published on November 18, 2011 in Emerging Markets and Global Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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].

What Is Sony Now?

Published on November 18, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

At 69, Sir Howard Stringer’s time as CEO of the unwieldy electronics giant is running out. Can he and heir apparent Kazuo Hirai turn it around?

Sony has been trying to adapt to the Internet Age for at least a decade, yet remains a gargantuan and unwieldy manufacturer, with 168,200 employees, 41 factories, and more than 2,000 products from headphones to medical printers to Hollywood-grade 3D movie production equipment [Source].

Consumers should expect to hear more about Sony Entertainment Network, the company’s most ambitious effort yet to connect all of its devices with all of its content. In addition to movies and music delivered through the disaggregated magic of the cloud, Hirai, who’s overseeing the project, is pushing his team to create additional services and exclusive content. That could include everything from Sony-produced TV shows to extended scenes from movies such as The Amazing Spider-Man and Arthur Christmas.

“The plan is to bring everything under the Sony Entertainment Network umbrella,”

Hirai says, including the PlayStation Network and its 45 million unique users. He adds that only now has hardware become powerful enough to deliver Sony content across all four screens of TVs, smartphones, tablets, and computers [Source].

Russian internet biggest in Europe; will earnings follow?

Published on November 14, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The moment Mail.ru and Yandex investors have been waiting for has arrived: Russia, at long last, has finally surpassed Germany to become the largest internet market in Europe.

According to comScore, the research firm, Russia had 50.8m internet users in September versus 50.1m users in Germany. And, luckily for those who bought into Russian internet stocks such as Mail.ru and Yandex at sky-high valuations, the market still has a lot of growth left.

With broadband penetration set to reach 60m people in Russia this year – a third of the population – there is still a large swath of the country where the internet revolution has yet to take hold [Source].

HTC’s Anti-Apple Strategy Wins U.S. Market

Published on November 10, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

HTC has become the top seller of smartphones in the U.S. with a strategy that’s precisely the opposite of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s. Where Apple is secretive, HTC is open. Where Apple is exclusive, HTC works with all carriers. Where Apple is proprietary, HTC is collaborative. Where Apple customizes for no one, HTC customizes for everyone. It’s the anti-Apple and, so far, it has worked.

By quickly incorporating the latest technologies and customizing phones for customers, Chou has forged ties to more than 100 wireless operators on six continents. The company has climbed to the No. 4 position in smartphones globally, behind Samsung, Apple and Nokia.

The question is whether HTC can stay on top. Chou has benefited as people trade in traditional phones, used primarily for voice calls and texting, for smartphones, which can download apps and surf the Web. Carriers scrambling to keep up with demand such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint turned to HTC for smartphones that use Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android software during the almost four years AT&T had exclusive U.S. rights to the iPhone [Source].

Indonesia is next for Asset Managers

Published on November 7, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., South Korea’s second-largest money manager, is considering an acquisition of an Indonesian asset-management company to tap rising affluence in the Southeast Asian nation.

Mirae Asset Global Investment is betting on higher income levels in Indonesia, whose middle class grew by 62 percent from 2003 to 2010, according to World Bank estimates.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are considering buying brokerages in Indonesia, two people with knowledge of the matter said in September, while South Korea’s Hyundai Securities Co. also said last month it’s considering an acquisition of a brokerage.

The International Monetary Fund predicts Indonesia’s economy, Southeast Asia’s biggest, will expand between 6 percent and 6.5 percent in 2011 and 2012, according to a statement on Oct. 21. Indonesian gross domestic product gained 6.49 percent in the second quarter, compared with growth of 4 percent in neighboring Malaysia and 2.6 percent in Thailand. [Source].

Buffett Broadens Portfolio by Spending $23.9B In Quarter

Published on November 7, 2011 in International Finance. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. invested $23.9 billion in the third quarter, the most in at least 15 years, as he accelerated stock purchases and broadened the portfolio beyond consumer and financial-company holdings.

Buffett, 81, drew down Berkshire’s cash as Europe’s debt crisis and Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. pushed stocks to their worst quarterly performance since 2008. The investments disclosed Nov. 4 include $6.9 billion of equities, $5 billion for preferred shares and warrants in Bank of America Corp. and the acquisition of Lubrizol Corp. for about $9 billion [Source].

Amazon’s Disruptive Growth Strategy

Published on October 31, 2011 in Global Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: .

This year Amazon invested heavily in disruptive-growth opportunities — and investors were not pleased.

On Tuesday, Amazon.com reported third-quarter earnings that fell far short of Wall Street’s expectations. Its earnings were down 73% from the quarter a year earlier and it missed the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.24 per share by nearly a dime

Amazon missed its earnings because the company has been investing more heavily than Wall Street expected. And these investments are being made in the infrastructure to support not just a single disruptive business, but a number of disruptive-growth opportunities. Below is a snapshot of Amazon’s portfolio of disruptive businesses:

  • Amazon Retail — disrupting traditional retailers
  • Amazon Kindle — disrupting the paper book format and paper book retailers
  • CreateSpace — a self-publishing solution that disrupts traditional publishing houses
  • Kindle Fire Tablet — a new market disruption enabled by business model innovation
  • Amazon MP3 and streaming audio and video — disrupting traditional content distribution companies
  • Amazon Web Services — disrupting the companies that sell on-site servers and native software applications

But Amazon looks at the world in a different way. The company has a set of organizational capabilities and is not afraid to leverage them to pursue almost any disruptive opportunity. It’s as if Amazon does not view itself as a retail company, but rather as an incubator for disruptive businesses. And in the process of building those businesses, the company is disrupting pretty much everyone except itself. By their nature, disruptive opportunities are small for a long time before they can contribute meaningfully to a large company’s bottom line [Source].

For Google, a New High in Deal-Making

Published on October 31, 2011 in High Tech & Media and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

With 57 completed deals under its belt this year, Google has already smashed its 2010 record of 48 acquisitions — and it is only October.

According to a filing submitted on Wednesday, Google announced it had spent $1.4 billion in the first nine months of 2011 on acquisitions.

That tally includes its $151 million purchase of Zagat, the online restaurant reviews site, $114 million for Daily Deals and $676 million for ITA Software, the travel software company.

Beyond those three transactions, Google largely focused on completing smaller transactions of $10 million or less. The remainder of its deals, 54 in all, accounted for about [Source].

Related stories: Google Cranks Up M&A Machine; Inside Google’s M&A machine: 3 months, $145 million, 9 deals; Google M&A boss presides over record year.

Samsung’s new phones will have flexible screens

Published on October 30, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Samsung‘s new mobile device lineup will feature flexible screens starting in 2012, the company announced today.

In its quarterly earnings call, Samsung’s vice president of investor relations, Robert Yi, told investors, analysts and press, “The flexible display we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part. The application probably will start from the handset side.”

After flexible-screen mobile phones roll out, the company plans to introduce the same technology for tablets and other devices.

In January 2011, Samsung purchased Liquivista, a strategic acquisition that will allow it to produce the kinds of displays that were announced today. Liquivista made electrowetting display technology, which is used to create mobile and other consumer electronic displays that are bright, low-power, flexible and transparent [Source].

That was fast: Samsung topples Apple as top smartphone maker

Published on October 29, 2011 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Samsung has now become the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, leaping past Apple, which held the title for just one quarter.

For Samsung, success not only came from Android, but also from Bada, its platform for inexpensive smartphones. In August, Bada appeared to be selling better than Windows Phone worldwide. Those numbers will only continue to rise for Samsung.

In July, we reported that Apple’s smartphone sales surpassed those of Nokia, the former leader, making it the No. 1 smartphone maker for several months. But Apple’s lead slipped due to the delayed launch of the iPhone 4S and the introduction of strong Samsung entries like the Galaxy S II.

Overall, global smartphone shipments grew 44 percent over last year to reach 117 million units. Samsung saw the biggest growth over the past year — it only shipped 7.5 million smartphones last year — while Nokia, unsurprisingly, fell the most, from 26.5 million smartphones shipped last year to 16.8 million this year [Source].