Why Lenovo's mobile phones are getting slower and slower

Recently, a statistic of "Global Smartphone Shipments in 2015" came to light.

Among the top ten smartphone shipments in the world, Chinese companies occupy eight of them. As international manufacturers are sluggish and domestic manufacturers are competing vigorously, we see an interesting data. After Lenovo completed the acquisition of Motorola in 2014, its global market share once reached 7.9%, ranking third in the world. However, one year after the integration of Motorola, its market share did not increase but fell to 5.4%, ranking fifth.

Why is Lenovo, which has become a leader in the surging PC market, so weak in the mobile phone business? Is it because Lenovo does not have a good product?

The answer is obviously no.

Lenovo was one of the first companies in China to enter the mobile phone market. In 2010, Lenovo launched its flagship mobile phone, LePHONE, at CES. It was equipped with LeOS, an operating system that was jointly developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is comparable to iOS.

In 2010, China was still in the era of feature phones. At that time, the market share of smartphones was very low. The other three companies in the later famous "China Cool Alliance" were still frantically pushing low-end phones through operator channels. It can be said that at that time, among all the mobile phone manufacturers in China, the only one that could be put on the table was Lenovo's.

Compared with the products of the same era, in 2010, the iPhone was still relying on the 3GS to conquer the world, HTC had just gotten rid of the image of a foundry and was riding the wave of Android, Samsung had not yet risen, and GALXY was still a product plan. In contrast, Lenovo at that time was not inferior to these international giants.

However, Lenovo did not follow up after tasting the sweetness. Based on LePHONE, most of the subsequent models launched by Lenovo were minor upgrades and minor improvements based on the previous design, without any major breakthroughs. However, Huawei, Coolpad, and ZTE have begun to develop their own flagship models in addition to the low-end models of operators. The gap between Lenovo and them has gradually narrowed. However, with Lenovo's management of channels and industrial chains, especially the sales of low-end models through operators, it still ranked first in the market share of Chinese smartphone brands that year.

After the birth and success of Xiaomi in 2011, domestic mobile phones entered the era of high performance and low price. Traditional mobile phone manufacturers began to "learn from Xiaomi". Lenovo, which had made little progress in high-end models, released a cost-effective model in 2012 - K860, which was enough to compete with Xiaomi.

With a 5-inch high-definition screen, Samsung processor and Lenovo's relatively good brand influence at the time, K860 quickly opened up the market for Lenovo in the 2,000 yuan price range and topped the JD mobile phone sales list that year. It became a model that could compete with Xiaomi at the time. However, Lenovo's quality control and workmanship, deviations in system optimization, and rough and careless design that did not care about details made K860 drown in the sea of ​​mobile phones after the hype, especially after competing products from other manufacturers came out one after another.

After that, Lenovo rarely had any models that impressed people. In 2013, Lenovo launched the first 5.5-inch full HD all-metal mobile phone in China, the K900, and invited Tang Wei and Kobe Bryant to endorse it. However, due to the lack of strict control over details and problems with system optimization, it was only a flash in the pan and no one cared about it anymore.

Moreover, Lenovo's brand strategy is very confusing.

In 2012, when the Xiaomi model was popular, traditional domestic mobile phone manufacturers began to establish their own dual-brand plans, trying to compete with Xiaomi by focusing on cost-effectiveness through sub-brands. For this purpose, Huawei established Honor, Coolpad established Dasheng, CITIC established Nubia, and Tianyu established Nibiru...

In the early days, Lenovo established four major series: K, P, A, and S, focusing on performance, battery life, practicality, and thinness. Later, as the process of high-quality products accelerated, Lenovo launched a new VIBE brand, which is not an independent brand. At the same time, the S and K series that established the brand image were merged into VIBE, corresponding to the VIBE X and VIBE Z series respectively.

The lack of sales in the mid-to-high-end market made Lenovo realize that it needed a series that focused on cost-effectiveness to compete with its competitors, so it hastily launched the Golden Fighter and Lemon series. After the sales of the Golden Fighter series did not increase, Lenovo merged it into the Lemon series.

In 2013, Lenovo completed the acquisition of Motorola, intending to turn it into a high-end brand. In 2015, Lenovo's independent brand Zuk announced its entry into the mobile phone industry and released the Zuk Z1.

At the end of 2015, after Lenovo tasted the sweetness of Lemon's sales, it announced the cancellation of the Vibe brand and implemented a dual-brand strategy of Lemon and Moto in China. Lenovo's brand strategy was officially clear at this point, with Moto responsible for the domestic mid-to-high-end and overseas markets, Lemon focusing on localization, and Zuk as an Internet brand focusing on cost-effectiveness. Unfortunately, Lenovo's efforts in operating the VIBE brand in the mid-to-high-end market for many years were in vain. The previously cheap Lemon brand also had difficulty gaining consumer recognition after launching the high-end market.

The latest Lenovo performance report shows that Lenovo's inventory reached 1.8 billion. Due to the cost of restructuring and inventory clearance of US$923 million, Lenovo's loss for the quarter was as high as US$714 million. This is also the first loss Lenovo Group has suffered since 2009.

Why is Lenovo, which seemed to have a good chance of winning before the wave of smartphone popularity, now the biggest loser?

First of all, Lenovo's advantage lies in its control over the industrial chain. In the early days of PC popularization in the 1990s, Lenovo made many innovations. In the mid-to-late period, when there were no major breakthroughs in PC technology, Lenovo managed the industrial chain optimization to do things faster, better, and at a lower cost than its competitors. Through this model, Lenovo eventually became the market leader in PCs, with outstanding performance in scale and internationalization.

When the wave of smartphones became popular in 2011, Lenovo had already settled for stability. It attempted to copy the successful model of PCs. However, smartphones were a new thing at the time and were far less mature than the PC field. Lenovo invested less in innovation and research and development, and had problems with poor workmanship and poor system optimization in product manufacturing.

Lenovo's success in the PC industry has made it a huge multinational company, and its resource advantages are far more powerful than other domestic mobile phone manufacturers. After Lenovo acquired Motorola in 2014, Lenovo held the latter's 3,500 employees, 2,000 patents, as well as brands and trademarks, and partnerships with more than 50 operators around the world. At this time, Lenovo had the ability to penetrate into overseas markets that domestic manufacturers did not have. Lenovo attempted to treat Moto in the same way as it did when it acquired Thinkpad in the PC industry. But the pace of change is no longer the same as before. Too slow integration, and all kinds of inadequate publicity and marketing. In Lenovo's slow process, Xiaomi has extended its tentacles to India, Huawei has also made some achievements in Europe, and ZTE has also gained popularity in the United States through the NBA title, while Lenovo, which originally had the best resources, can only watch itself being overtaken by its competitors.

Moreover, the excessive size makes it difficult to implement decisions. Lenovo's management is full of positions and positions, and they do not buy into each other's ideas, which leads to low efficiency. The top management also knows that there are problems with the company and its products, but the huge size makes Lenovo's every decision cautious, as a single move can affect the entire company. Like most traditional Chinese companies, it is difficult to make a big breakthrough after becoming big.

Lenovo also has frequent internal personnel changes. In early 2015, Feng Xing, who was the vice president of Lenovo Group and the general manager of MIDH China Business Department, announced that he would join LeTV as its mobile business president. In June of the same year, Liu Jun, who had been in charge of Lenovo's mobile business, announced his resignation, and Chen Xudong of Magic Factory replaced him as the president of Lenovo's mobile business. Lenovo's strategy also changed with the frequent changes in the top management, and the implementation speed was really slow.

They also believe that Lenovo is too focused on immediate interests and has missed many opportunities. In the early stage, when it should have been promoting high-end machines to establish its brand image, Lenovo gave up because it was greedy for the huge sales volume in the operator channel. In the mid-term, it was reluctant to let go of its status and take steps in promoting the brand division and Internet strategy, and stopped trying after a hasty test. In the later stage, it did nothing in terms of process innovation. While Huawei has tried to develop its own chips and the up-and-coming Xiaomi is also making steady progress in cooperation with Unigroup, Lenovo, which should have the strongest technical strength, has invested very little in scientific research and innovation.

Lenovo got up early but arrived late in its march into the mobile phone industry. Yang Yuanqing also pointed out a series of problems within Lenovo in an internal email to company employees. However, it is easier to find than to solve. If Lenovo does not change its internal problems as soon as possible, it will be difficult to avoid being eliminated in the face of increasingly fierce competition, even though it has strong financial resources.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.