Lenovo, cel mai cunoscut brand din China

Numai eu am cumpărat 2 laptopuri Lenovo în familie în ultimul an, pentru că aveau o configurație ok la un pret decent și erau stabile. Mulți nu știu prea multe despre brandul ăsta, exceptând faptul că în 2005 Lenovo a cumpărat pentru 1.75 miliarde de dolari divizia de calculatoare a IBM în State.

Lenovo poate fi versiunea chineză a demarării unei afaceri de succes de la zero, dintr-un garaj, cum ne-au obișnuit americanii să citim despre începuturile unor companii ca Apple sau Microsoft. Câteva paragrafe interesante dintr-un articol detaliat despre ascensiunea companiei:

A third of the computers sold in the district are Lenovos, roughly approximating its market share in the whole of China, where it is by far the No. 1 seller of PCs. Its network of 15,000-plus stores reaches into the most remote of villages. That’s almost as many locations as Starbucks has in the entire world–and roughly 14,700 more stores than Apple has.

For the past two years, Lenovo has been the fastest-growing company in the PC industry. In the third quarter of 2011, it sold a record 13.5% of PCs worldwide, leapfrogging Dell and Acer to seize the No. 2 spot. (Only HP sells more.) Dominating China has much to do with Lenovo’s success; the rising supereconomy became the world’s largest PC market this year.

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.

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. But the story of Lenovo’s rise is also a parable for Chinese business: In just 30 years, an enterprise launched in the Beijing equivalent of a garage–by a founder who endured forced relocation and admits he bungled his early attempts at business–has blossomed at a pace no one predicted. Lenovo is redefining “Made in China,” producing the industry’s highest-quality machines; it ranked No. 1 in the 2011 Computer Reliability Report, ahead of Apple and HP.

The rural market holds huge growth opportunities for Lenovo, which already posts annual China revenue north of $10 billion. More than half of China’s 1.3 billion residents live outside the cities, and the country’s rapid economic growth is gradually reaching them–as is broadband access. The majority of Lenovo’s Chinese outlets are in rural areas, poised to sell computers to the millions who have never owned them.

Articolul complet despre Lenovo.