The VAR Guy runs hot and cold on Lenovo. One minute, he praises Lenovo’s ThinkPad brand. The next, he openly wonders if Lenovo can hold off rivals like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer. Plus, Lenovo’s server strategy — particularly as it relates to Linux — is nowhere to be seen.
Frankly, The VAR Guy always considered Lenovo “half” a company. Sure, Lenovo makes solid laptops, desktops and workstations. Wonderful. And Lenovo dominates the PC market in China. Kudos. But the former IBM PC company lacked more sophisticated products — particularly Intel servers running Linux and Windows. That’s where the real action — and the real margin — is.
Lenovo licensed some IBM technology earlier this year to get into the server game. Nice, but where’s the big product blitz? Where’s all the reseller-focused training and evangelism to get partners lined up behind the servers? And most of all, where’s Lenovo’s Linux server strategy?
The latest PC market research, as covered by BusinessWeek, suggests that Lenovo is losing its dominant grip in China. A solid server business — if Lenovo had one — would help Lenovo to win enterprise-wide contracts and to fend off PC rivals.
So far, that server strategy (mixing Windows and Linux) hasn’t materialized.
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Lenovo = thinkpad but not much else. Acquiring only IBM’s PC company and not an x86 server business was a bad move.