Yang Yuanqing: Lenovo cannot lose "manufacturing"

Before interviewing Yang Yuanqing, the reporter came to Lenovo's product showroom on the 10th Street in Shanghai. A “flat-panel notebook” can be hung in the kitchen for recipes, on a sofa as a tablet, and placed on a table as an ordinary notebook – in front of Lenovo’s 2012 world’s first 360-degree flipbook, more than 20 people came to visit. The United States’ customer representatives have expressed their admiration. The exhibition hall will receive a series of channels, channels, customers and other visitors from all over the world every week.

According to data released recently by IDC, in terms of global smart terminal production, Samsung first, Apple second, Lenovo followed closely, and the distance with the fourth HP is increasing.

Lenovo, the Chinese IT company started more than 20 years ago in a small cottage in Zhongguancun, has now become the world's largest PC manufacturer. In the field of smartphones, Lenovo also took up only 1% of the domestic market share in 2010 when it released its first smartphone, and it has grown to a current market share of about 15%.

Yesterday afternoon, Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, accepted an exclusive interview with this reporter and expressed his opinions on how Lenovo has responded to new competition in the field of mobile Internet in recent years.

PC will not die

Reporter: With the rise of smart phones and tablet computers, many people believe that PC manufacturers gradually lost their competitive advantage in the mobile Internet era. What do you think?

Yang Yuanqing: Unlike smartphones in the past, smart phones are simply simple voice communication tools mainly for making calls and sending text messages. They also involve a large number of applications and data services. These are precisely the capabilities and specialties that traditional PC vendors have long accumulated. Nowadays, smart phones, smart TVs, and applications and data services are still under the PC architecture.

If we are more specific, we will gradually establish our own unique advantages in the aspects of equipment safety, equipment coordination and synchronization.

For example, the security of mobile phones. Everyone now knows that the security risks of Android phones are very serious. Compared with the installation of security software after shipment, Lenovo can take security issues into consideration when editing top-level design code. This is like cold and cold to prevent colds, while wearing down jackets is certainly warm, but only strong and strong, fundamentally solve the problem of weakened immune capacity, can be less cold.

At the same time, I believe that despite the rapid development of tablet PCs, PCs will not die out quickly. Tablet PCs will only be an effective complement to traditional PCs, and consumers will switch to high-end PCs and large-screen smart phones.

Reporter: Compared with Samsung and Apple, these two giants, Lenovo's advantages in mobile terminals still exist?

Yang Yuanqing: In addition to the accumulation of software and applications, compared with Samsung and Apple, Lenovo also has a strong channel advantage. Samsung may rely mainly on large appliance stores. Although Apple has its own store, the store is limited to the central city, but only a few dozen. Lenovo's stores have tens of thousands of stores in China and are scattered throughout Chinese cities, townships, and even small towns. When you come to a very small county or even the township below the county, you can see Lenovo's specialty stores. Stores in all corners, a large user base, this is our strength. In addition, we have achieved high coverage on the product line, covering everything from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. Mobile phones sell much more than computers. This is an inevitable trend, so the rich product coverage is also an advantage.

Another advantage is that we firmly grasp the production and channels. We can maintain the low stock in the channel as much as possible while keeping the market going. This operating capability is also unmatched by foreign manufacturers.

In the high-end era, we must “deeply plow”

Reporter: Unlike the original companies competing to set up factories in developing countries with low labor costs, Lenovo has set up production lines in developed countries. Does it mean that some media and industry professionals worry that manufacturing will return to the United States, or it may only be Lenovo's international presence? Strategic considerations in the trend?

Yang Yuanqing: In October last year, Lenovo announced the establishment of a production line for PC production in North Carolina. This is the first time that Lenovo has established a PC production line in the United States. In fact, Lenovo established a production line in North America in order to meet the needs of local customers more quickly and meet the internationalization of Lenovo.

Lenovo's customers are now located in more than 160 countries around the world. While the "breadth" of global expansion reaches a certain scale, we need to work hard at the same time to deepen the key markets.

One of the manifestations is that we not only established a localized market and sales force, but also established production bases in key countries such as the United States, increased R&D investment, and made full use of local talents to establish local competitive advantages. Such an all-round and multi-angle layout will enable us to be faster, more innovative, and more flexible to meet the needs of global customers in the development of high-end PCs.

Inspired by "manufacturing"

Reporter: Hewlett-Packard and other competitors in the PC field are gradually outsourcing the manufacturing sector. Why does Lenovo insist on its own manufacturing?

Yang Yuanqing: Unlike many companies that outsource production, people cannot supply goods when the market demand is high, and when the market is not good, people can't stop on the brakes and the flexibility is too poor. Lenovo particularly emphasizes independent manufacturing and considers it important to operate hardware.

If you lose anything, you must not lose it. Lose manufacturing and lose innovation. Because once all the production processes are outsourced, companies no longer personally contact components, parts, etc., and are no longer sensitive to innovation in the component field, and will miss many of the resulting innovations.

Lenovo recently invested nearly 5 billion yuan in Wuhan to prepare for the construction of a new smartphone production base with an annual output of at least 34 million units. After the base is completed, our response to the smart phone market will be faster and more flexible.