Background & Marketing Strategy

Led the PC microprocessor market and ousted competition through sole licensor decision: Post losing a contract to supply microprocessors to Apple, in early 1980s, Intel won a contract to provide the same to IBM for its PCs. IBM PCs were a huge success and catapulted Intel to gain market leadership. IBM initially forced Intel to license its product to other players to secure adequate supplies reducing Intel’s potential

I personally agree with Lenovo’s strategy to keep the ThinkPad brand separately from the other product lines. This will not damage the ThinkPad brand quality. Moreover, building the ThinkPad + Lenovo connection through advertising and marketing campaigns such as ThinkPad Unleashed, the ThinkPad reputation can eventually be seen in the rest of Lenovo products. In my opinion, launching its first Lenovo brand PC worldwide by using a product number (3000 series) was not the best idea. The fact that numbers are pretty generic and the same number may be used on many products across many industries could be confusing. I would recommend Lenovo to create a new name as what Sony and Compaq did with the Vaio and Presario. The name of the new product that could imply an image of a good choice, easy on the budget, and a good home companion. At the present, Lenovo named their other product lines differently. The “ThinkPad” are seen as business laptops with premium quality while the “IdeaPad” and the “Essential” are built for home and small business users. Lastly, Lenovo should differentiate itself as being the “new world type” of company. The combination of East and West, innovation and efficiency can become the company’s competitive advantage.

In the 1990s, one of the largest and most successful companies in the world was Intel. For PC business, Intel was a significant and beneficial hardware provider.

When Quiksilver announced the start of its women line Roxy in 1990, they defined the brand as a “fun, bold, athletic, daring and classy” brand for young women. Market segmentation is a crucial marketing strategy and Roxy utilizes the four bases that are commonly used for segmenting consumer markets including geographic, demographic, psychographic, and benefits sought segmentation. The geographic segmentation is ideally unlimited for the Roxy target market because the brand offers clothes for both warm and cold weather, however, it focuses mainly on the “beach lifestyle” and is generally more popular in beach towns. The demographic segmentation of the Roxy brand, is aimed to attract young women between the

As a global leader in the PC market, Lenovo’s success rests on its ability to deliver consumer centric innovations in products that deliver a blend of mobility, performance and price. Design is an infrastructural element that helps define every aspect of a company, including Web site, stores, customer support, packaging, and messaging as well as its products. Lenovo has a well-earned industry reputation for delivering superior quality products. Quality is a fundamental component and commitment to customer satisfaction by delivering products that are of superior quality to comparable offerings from their competitors is the key to Lenovo’s success. In recent years, Lenovo relies heavily on local manufacturing strategies to shorten

Founded in Taiwan, Acer is a multinational manufacturer of electronics. They also happen to own the largest franchised personal computer retail chain that exists in Taipei, Taiwan. It is also the 3rd largest personal computer manufacturer in the world behind Hewlett Packard and Dell Incorporated. Their product line incorporates a variety of personal computer products including laptops, desktop systems, as well as servers and storage, peripherals, displays, e-business services for business, government, education, and even home users, and personal digital

IBM Market Leader in Mainframe –market share 61%, starts PC business in ’81, in 2 yrs market share is 42%

The PC industry is highly competitive and constantly changing as technology evolves and customer needs change. Some of the top competitors in the PC industry are IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple. Theses rivals are constantly jockeying for the top competitor’s position. They compete in prices, product innovation, advertising, etc.

As indicated in the table above, Dell and HP are the strongest players in the computer industry. These results are also supported by the market share statistics presented in case Exhibit 3. Conversely, the table above indicates Acer as the industry’s weakest rival in part because it focuses on producing low priced computers,

Thirty-three years ago, the founder of Lenovo founded the company with only 33,231 USD (converted from 20,000 CNY). 2 Nevertheless, Lenovo has become one of the Fortune 500 companies, and it is one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world, with a more than 20% market share, and around 43 billion revenues in 2016. 3 Over the past three decades, Lenovo has implemented numerous strategies to achieve such accomplishments. Since multinational enterprises often involve in

China is also scaling the technological arc in refined sectors such as mobile processor chips. It was absent in this sector where its competitors such as Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp. are a bit far. China 's Allwinner Technology Co. and Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. are boosting their existence in the fast-developing market for chips that are utilized in low-end tablets and smartphones. The government of China has plans to expend about $5 billion to develop a fund for innovations in the microchip industry (Osawa, 2014). In terms of consumer products, very few Chinese varieties have become successful globally. Personal-computer Company Lenovo Group Ltd last year overhauled Hewlett-Packard Co. to be the

Founded in June 1911, IBM has always been a leading company in the technology industry and at the forefront of innovation. It is a manufacturer of computer hardware and software, and also provides infrastructure, hosting and consulting services. Before the 2000s, IBM was the largest PC vendor in the world. However, the hardware sales have continually declined since 2000, and IBM sold its PC group to Lenovo in 2004, as well as its x86 Server Business in 2014. In the new era of the technology industry, IBM has faced the challenge to transit from a hardware manufacturer to a service company.

Both Dell and HP are two strong players in PC industry which refers to an industry where companies produces PCs (desktops and notebooks), handheld devices (smart phones and tablets), and workstations. However, with growing global expansion, Dell and HP’s performance differs. Dell, once the world’s largest PC maker in 2001, has continually lost its market share to HP and Acer since 2007 (Guglielmo 2009). The cause is rooted in two differences of these companies: company diversifications and core competences. Therefore, how firms can continually survive in the PC business is more of an issue for Dell than for HP.

Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984, which is a global leader in PC companies. It is made up of the original Lenovo group and the original IBM PC division. Lenovo is one of the world 's top 500 companies, its turnover is up to $46000000000. In addition, it is the leader of world 's consumer and enterprise innovation technology.

Compaq and Dell stole IBM’s PC market with the right price and the right message.