Video games have shown their role in promoting many industries.
Electronic games have shown their role in advancing many industries. From the media to the digital industry, the rapid development of games has brought unimaginable promotional effects. Under this, a series of products such as gaming computers and gaming mobile phones have emerged, triggering new changes in the industry.
For Lenovo, the emergence and enthusiasm of gaming phones has given it a new opportunity for development. On the evening of May 18th, Lenovo launched the latest savior gaming phone 2 Pro. The launch of this new gaming phone represents a new opportunity for Lenovo to be staged soon.
As a veteran PC manufacturer, choosing to make game phones means that it finally ushered in the time when it was seeking change. How not to become the next Nokia, perhaps Lenovo has the answer in its own mind. For Lenovo, is it the best answer to return to the mobile phone business?
Rely on “saviors” to save the mobile phone business?
As Lenovo’s latest product in gaming phones, this phone carries Lenovo’s expectation to “save” its mobile phone business. The mobile phone business is a problem for Lenovo. Contrary to the frequent “meetings” of Goose Factory in the e-commerce business, Lenovo once stood at the pinnacle of the domestic mobile phone industry.
In the beginning, the name “China Cool Alliance” almost represented the development direction and status of the domestic mobile phone industry, leading the domestic mobile phone industry. However, from 2015, Lenovo’s smartphone business has shown a decline. This trend continued until 2017. In this year, Lenovo’s smartphone sales in the Chinese market fell to only 1.79 million units, with a market share of 0.4%.
This trend has improved after returning to being responsible for the mobile phone business. The launch of the ZUK series has given Lenovo’s mobile phone business a new lease of life. Relying on the regular “Porcelain marketing” approach, Lenovo’s mobile phone business has improved slightlyBecause of this, Chang Cheng won the title of “King of Wanci”.
But even so, the decline is difficult to reverse. In the domestic mobile phone market at that time, Huawei, Xiaomi, Apple, VIVO, and OPPO were fighting fiercely, followed by brands such as OnePlus, Meizu, Gionee, and Samsung.
In fact, the fierce competition in the entire domestic mobile phone market has become difficult to tolerate the entry of a new brand, and the congestion of the entire industry has reached saturation. The most important thing is that the brand at the head has built a brand moat, and at the same time has a strong resistance to scale, especially that it has cultivated a certain user scale effect, and the user’s stickiness is high. Therefore, although latecomers may not lag behind in product quality, they still cannot obtain higher sales.
Finally, after Chang Cheng left Lenovo for “physical reasons”, he jumped to his former rival Xiaomi, and Lenovo’s mobile phone business has been shrinking in the domestic market share, relying more on Motorola’s overseas market. maintain.
Lenovo’s failure is ultimately due to its lack of grasp of the industry’s frontier winds. In this situation, there are few opportunities to break through the blockade. The only opportunity for the entire smartphone industry, which lacks innovation and changes and is just constantly involuntary, is the emergence of new outlets.
It seems that Lenovo’s “fate” is really good. The emergence of the epidemic has detonated the game industry, and at the same time has spawned the rapid development of related hardware or industries, especially the computer and mobile phone industries. Under the e-sports boom, products with the e-sports name have become popular, and gaming laptops and gaming phones have become one of the big winners in this consumption upgrade.
Lenovo’s opportunity is here. Today, Lenovo’s mobile phone business is subdivided into three lines, positioning Motorola in the mid-to-high-end business mobile phone market; the traditional product line Lemon, which focuses on cost-effectiveness and maintains the entry-level market; and is positioned as a savior e-sports phone in gaming and related markets. .
Obviously, Lenovo now refines the entire mobile phone business, clarifies the production line, and focuses on the needs of market segments. In addition, more importantly, Lenovo changed its previous lack of user awareness training. In this situation where the user’s mind has been occupied by “Huami OV”, Lenovo has also begun to learn how to contact users.
After the launch of the savior e-sports phone, Lenovo pushed it through various channels such as Weibo, station B, and live broadcast rooms. These channels are the most common gathering places for game phone users. This is the early stage for this e-sports phone. It gathered a lot of user attention.
For Lenovo, gaming phones are the “outlet” for its mobile phone business to reverse. When Lenovo has cultivated a certain user awareness in the gaming phone market, it will eventually be able to feed back to other segmented mobile phone businesses. Drive the growth of Lenovo’s entire mobile business. However, it should be noted that the current gaming mobile phone market is also facing fierce competition.It still needs to work hard.
Traditional desktops are “the general trend is gone,” and notebooks have become the “mainstay”?
The rapid development of gaming phones actually comes from the emergence of gaming notebooks.
In recent years, the overall development trend of the PC industry is in a downward trend. Before 2020, global PC shipments have declined for seven consecutive years. But in 2020, the epidemic has left people trapped in their homes, and games have become the best choice to resolve being “closed” at home. Steam, the world’s largest gaming platform, had more than 23 million simultaneous online users during the epidemic, which was much higher than the data during the normal period.
The driving force brought by the epidemic is huge. According to a report released by IDC, global gaming PC and gaming monitor shipments will increase by 26.8% in 2020. This is since IDC began statistics on related products in 2016. , The growth rate and the number of units set a record year. Most importantly, shipments of gaming notebooks increased by 26.8% year-on-year to 24 million units, accounting for 43.6% of overall shipments.
With the rapid development of the game market, gaming laptops have become the backbone of the PC The demand for highly portable notebook computers is also increasing.
In fact, in addition to the rapid development of the gaming notebook computer market, the entire notebook computer market is showing a rapid upward trend, which is in sharp contrast to the downturn in the desktop PC market. The epidemic has changed and continues to affect the public’s consumption trend of computing equipment. When remote office, mixed office, and online learning become the mainstream lifestyle, this makes the demand for notebook computers reach the highest level.
The 2021 Q1 global notebook computer market report released by the research institute Strategy Analytics shows that the global notebook computer shipments in the first quarter of 2021 surged 81% year-on-year to an astonishing 68.2 million units, compared with only 3780 in the same period last year. Million units. Thanks to the rapid growth of the entire market, Lenovo’s notebook shipments were 16.3 million units, a year-on-year increase of 84%, ranking first in the world.
For Lenovo, this may be its best quarter, and 2020 is also Lenovo’s best year. 20/21 fiscal yearIn the third fiscal quarter, Lenovo’s turnover reached RMB 114.2 billion, an increase of 22.3% year-on-year, and its net profit increased significantly by 53.1% year-on-year. All businesses achieved growth in turnover and profitability.
According to different price points and user needs, Lenovo launched the main low-end lightweight Xiaoxin series, high-end office YOGA series, office business ThinkPad series and the all-round game savior game. This series has achieved good results in the market. Word of mouth. Among them, the entire series of Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro 13 has achieved sales of more than one million units since it went on the market in 2019.
It can be seen that, as a veteran computer equipment manufacturer, this veteran company that has experienced years of ups and downs is still full of vitality. Although before 2020, due to the continuous impact of the traditional PC market’s decline on Lenovo, Lenovo was once caught in a growth dilemma. However, the PC business is Lenovo’s trump card business. When home office, games, and online education are gradually becoming the rigid needs of the public, the future PC business will undoubtedly bring Lenovo a higher imagination.
Opportunities for data center business are still there. Can intelligent transformation bring new changes to Lenovo?
Lenovo, which is at the head of the global PC manufacturer, has relied on the PC business to support a business empire, but this empire is also facing the pressure of transformation.
Although the PC business is Lenovo’s most important business line, it is too dependent on the PC business, which often makes Lenovo known as an “assembly factory”. How to transform? It has become a question surrounding Lenovo.
With the rapid penetration of data and cloud technology, data will become the most important foundation of this era, and the data center, as the basis for carrying, will continue to expand with the deepening of data.
In fact, the transformation of intelligence and data is exactly the direction of transformation that Lenovo wants to achieve. But in terms of performance, Lenovo’s transformation has not been smooth. Yang Yuanqing once said that the “milestone” sign of Lenovo Group’s successful transformation is that its data center business revenue accounts for more than double digits. Lenovo’s latest financial report can see that the data center business in the 20/21Q3 quarter has reached a high of US$1.634 billion, a new high, but it still has not exceeded the US$1.7 billion level.
Lenovo wants to transform from a PC manufacturer to intelligent and data-based, the key lies in the dataAlthough Lenovo still has not made greater breakthroughs in the data center business, when the demand for the entire data center market continues to grow, it is believed that Lenovo will be able to seize this opportunity, just like seizing the outlet for gaming phones, and achieve transformation .
As the 5G era is approaching, cloud technology is becoming a topic of concern. The high-speed transmission brought by 5G technology will make the cloud a technology that everyone can have, and personal cloud disks are becoming the basic needs of the public. However, the rapid expansion of the cloud has brought high requirements for cloud servers. As a data center manufacturer, Lenovo will naturally be able to enjoy this dividend and provide sufficient impetus for its transformation.
In the company profile of Lenovo Group, Lenovo wrote its future development strategy: “Facing the opportunity of a new round of intelligent transformation of the industry, Lenovo proposes an intelligent transformation strategy, centered on Smart IoT, intelligent The three directions of Smart Infrastructure and Smart Verticals have become the leader and enabler of the intelligent transformation of the industry.”
Intelligence has become a wave sweeping the world. Lenovo, which is seeking intelligent transformation, will be able to catch up with this global PC manufacturer when the industrial upgrading brought about by intelligent transformation has arrived. It will be the key node that determines its future development.
Since the end of 2020, Lenovo’s stock price has continued to rise, and is gradually approaching its historical high in 2015. The rise in stock prices also means that the capital market is optimistic about Lenovo.
When a new cycle of change arrives, it is currently unknown whether Lenovo, which is ready to go, can keep up with the development of the times. But as Yang Yuanqing once said in his internal letter, “Those who fail to destroy us will eventually make us stronger.” Lenovo will also continue to move forward.
Author Squirrel Fish