For Lenovo, the most painful thing is that the path you should take is taken by others.

The road taken by Xiaomi computer is actually the road that Lenovo has been promoting in public and the public, and Yang Yuanqing, the successor of Liu, has been habitually ruthless in the face of questions from the outside world about Lenovo's lack of technology:

For example, "Lenovo does not disgrace the title of the high-tech industry", "If the best high-tech enterprises in China have no technology, then the high-tech enterprises in China cannot be called high-tech", "Lenovo has not yet passed the IT winter, and the net profit rate and gross profit margin have risen, which shows how valuable Lenovo's technology is." ”

Lenovo's lack of core technology is not only concerned by the public after 2018, as early as the late nineties to the beginning of the 21st century, because of Ni Liu's debate, coupled with Lenovo's financial year performance after listing, Lenovo has no technology to be taken out by the media, experts and scholars in turn.

Therefore, Lenovo's executives from all walks of life have publicly stated that Lenovo has technology, but Lenovo's technology is not the same as the technology that everyone thinks.

After Yang Yuanqing answered a reporter's question about Lenovo technology, he said that Lenovo would jointly develop a CPU with Intel, and a reporter immediately asked: "Lenovo's chief technology officer He Zhiqiang said in a public interview before:

If Lenovo makes the CPU tomorrow, it will have to die.

And Mr. Yang just said that Lian wants to jointly develop CPUs with Intel, is there a contradiction between the two? ”

He Zhiqiang is also a wonderful person, he is Ni Guangnan's subordinate, he followed Ni Guangnan to do the research and development of Hanka, and later stood on Liu's side.

In an interview, he said: "Lenovo has technology. There are product technology and application technology. If Lenovo makes a CPU tomorrow, it will have to die. The core technology is the technology that can continuously bring sustainable value to the enterprise, and it cannot be called the core technology of the enterprise just to make a thing. ”

This is not the most ridiculous, the most ridiculous is that He Zhiqiang is quite complacent about the current situation of the Lenovo Research Institute: three years ago, the Lenovo Research Institute could only do projects for 5 people, last year we were able to do projects for more than a dozen people, and we can also do projects for more than 20 people this year.

This is his original words in 2002, for a company with a revenue of 10 billion Hong Kong dollars and a profit of 500 million Hong Kong dollars, it is called technology to do a joint research and development project of 20 people.

(The reason why it is denominated in Hong Kong dollars is because Lenovo was listed in Hong Kong at that time, and the public statistics were only in Hong Kong dollars)

After the reporter asked, Yang Yuanqing did not answer, but looked at He Zhiqiang, He Zhiqiang took the microphone from the host's hand, and did not feel embarrassed at all:

"For this question, what I meant at the time was that if Lenovo developed the CPU purely by itself, it would be a dead end, and it would be different with the joint research and development of an enterprise like Intel.

Intel has the technology, and Lenovo has been deeply involved in the Chinese market for many years, understanding what consumers in the Chinese market need, and the joint development of the two sides is a major benefit to Chinese consumers. Lenovo can also take advantage of this opportunity to further master the core technology. ”

Because Lenovo hopes to make the Legend World technical conference grand enough, it has invited a large number of media, which are not all waiting for Lenovo, and Lenovo can't influence so many media, especially in this era when most of the media are still surnamed China.

Not to mention that there were also fast-running Xiangjiang reporters present: "Mr. He, I want to ask if it was because Xinxin Technology took the lead in cooperating with Intel, so Lenovo began to cooperate with Intel?" ”

He Zhiqiang nodded: "Yes, Xinxin has given us new ideas, we can be more involved in the upstream of the computer, and this cooperation with Intel is an attempt." ”

Lenovo's abacus is not the same as Xinxin, although the cooperation between Xinxin and Intel is more superficial, just sent a group of employees to Silicon Valley to jointly do chip design with Intel, in fact, it is just to do some peripheral auxiliary work, in the process of Xinxin Technology is holding the idea of letting employees learn something.

The most important thing is to help Intel OEM and cultivate this group of foundry teams, which is the core purpose of Xinxin.

Lenovo is completely superficial, they don't even plan to send people, when the time comes, hold a few remote conference calls, and then pay a sum of money to Intel, when the time comes, buy a joint authorization of Intel Huaguo special chips and it's over, it belongs to spending money to invite people to engage in joint money.

The reporter continued to ask: "Will Lenovo be involved in the chip foundry like Xinxin?" And will Lenovo take advantage of this opportunity to set up a specialized chip design company in the future? ”

He Zhiqiang can't answer this kind of question about the specific operation of the enterprise, and can only be answered by Yang Yuanqing, he said: "We will not consider doing chip foundry for the time being, chip foundry is an asset-heavy industry, Lenovo's current foundation is still too thin, and the risk of chip foundry is huge, and we need to consider this matter extremely carefully."

The establishment of a dedicated chip design company also needs to be considered.

Both of these things depend on whether the chips we launch in cooperation with Intel can be recognized by consumers, and then in terms of difficulty, chip design companies obviously have to rank ahead of chip foundries.

Lenovo has always wanted to make every step stable enough, and even if we do chip foundry, we will consider more ways to cooperate with external companies.

Xinxin Technology is the leading chip company in China, and their chip foundry accepts external financing. ”

"Mr. Yang, Lenovo and Mr. Zhou's Xiaomi are in direct competition, and Xinxin Technology and Xiaomi can be regarded as different subsidiaries under a group, in this context, Xinxin Technology may not accept Lenovo's investment, right?

Will Lenovo consider going for Mr. Zhou's industry model on its own? Through consumer-oriented enterprises, the coordinated development of upstream and downstream supply chain enterprises is driven, that is, the model of making computers and computer core components at the same time. ”

Yang Yuanqing reacted quickly: "Huaguo's PC market is not a zero-sum game, it is big enough to accommodate enough players, and we are not in direct competition with Xiaomi.

Lenovo's product line covers the price range of 2000 yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, and Xiaomi can only affect the market between 3000 yuan and 6000 yuan, and we are only part of the competition. I don't think it will affect the cooperation between Lenovo and Xinxin.

Second, for the time being, Lenovo will not consider taking the development model of Xiaomi and Xinxin, because we have no experience, and it takes a lot of energy to start exploring again, which is far less cost-effective than directly purchasing chips.

With the development of science and technology, the division of labor of enterprises is becoming more and more clear, what we need to do is to integrate the supply chain, and it is not the responsibility of Lenovo to do what the supply chain should do.

I know you still want to ask why the new president can, but we can't, because the new president has been starting a business in Silicon Valley for a long time, and he has enough global appeal, and the new president's name is equivalent to Intel, Motorola or IBM, and his name endorsement alone can attract a large number of talents.

Lenovo is only famous in China, we can't attract enough professionals in the field of chips, we do this kind of thing is half the effort, it is to ignore Lenovo's own advantages, to Lenovo unfamiliar areas and fight with others. ”

This kind of thinking is not wrong, after all, in 2002, no one could have predicted that the chip would not be able to be bought in the future, but Lenovo does not have to worry, let alone 20 years later, even after 40 years, Lenovo's purchase of chips will not be affected.

"Mr. Yang, I want to ask you what you think of Xiaomi and Xiaomi's technical strength? Compared with Xiaomi, Lenovo has a longer history, but Lenovo does not have a core technology like Xiaomi that can be seen at a glance in technology, how do you understand the reason behind it? ”

Yang Yuanqing thought to himself, is this Lenovo's technology conference or Xiaomi's technology conference, one or two of you are here to ask questions that have nothing to do with the technology conference.

The related applications mentioned by Lenovo before, no one cares about the smart home that has been built with great effort, which makes Yang Yuanqing a little nervous. But because the audience was full of media reporters, he had to manage his expressions:

Although Xinxin Technology has only been established for more than two years, almost all of their core R&D teams are from Silicon Valley.

Their technical reserves are far greater than those of Lenovo, which is the most important reason why Xinxin can have these core technologies. This is what I just mentioned, the success of every enterprise cannot be replicated, and Lenovo cannot replicate the appeal of the new president in the group of engineers in Silicon Valley.

Xinzhong can attract a large number of Chinese engineers and R&D personnel to return to Zhangjiang to help him work, is this something that Lenovo can do?

In the early days of its establishment, the new general manager was able to throw money at the R&D department in hundreds of millions and dollars regardless of the cost, can Lenovo do it? According to my understanding, Xinxin's R&D investment is measured in billions of dollars, which is close to Lenovo's annual revenue.

With Lenovo's Shenteng 1800 server, which only passed the appraisal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences last month, our R&D investment is only about 50 million, and the unit is only RMB.

The two are not in any way comparable. ”

Xinxin Technology was not listed, and the reporters present did not know the R&D investment of Xinxin, and after hearing the investment of 1 billion US dollars, the reporters were first surprised by the number, and then when they linked this number with Zhou Xin, they felt that it was not much.

According to the answer of Chairman Dawning in an interview, Lenovo relied on poaching a large number of core R&D personnel of Dawning, including the vice president of Dawning in charge of research and development, to successfully complete the research and development of Deepeng 1800.

Is it possible for Lenovo to replicate the success of Shenteng 1800 and tap some of the core R&D members of Xinxin? ”

Shenteng 1800, the first supercomputer in China with a performance of more than one trillion floating point operations, is composed of 526 Intel Xeon processors and 256 computer functional node machines, which is Lenovo's most proficient research and development achievement.

Yang Yuanqing didn't want to offend Zhou Xin, even if Zhou Xin's company entered the field of personal computers: "If in the field of personal computers, I have the confidence that I can poach people from Xiaomi, but in the field of chips, I don't have the slightest confidence that Lenovo can poach people from Xinxin."

We haven't even entered the chip field yet. ”

Lenovo's Legend World conference was gorgeous, but the effect was very unsuccessful, no one cared about the concept of related applications they launched, and no one cared about the supercomputer they just launched, Shenteng 1800, everyone was concerned about how strong the technical strength of Xinxin was.

Xiaomi's model is a shock to all computer companies in China, with the help of its own supply chain, Xiaomi can reduce costs to the extreme, and through online and offline marketing methods, it can quickly build a marketing network throughout most parts of China.

This style of play is limited by production capacity, so they don't break their muscles and bones. But whether it is Lenovo at the head, Founder, or TCL at the back, Ziguang These domestic brands have felt the chill, the price of Xiaomi is so low, there are few consumers who really buy it, but the number of consumers affected is not small.

Because of the ultra-low price of Xiaomi computers, there are also many bad phenomena on the market, such as buying and selling at a price increase of 51,000 after buying, and the most snapped up are the merchants in the computer city, who increase the price by 1,000 when they buy it, and even exaggerate the price by 3,000.

After Lenovo's Legend World conference, public opinion further pushed Lenovo and Xiaomi to the forefront, especially on the Internet:

"Recently, I was invited to participate in Lenovo's Legend World conference as a company representative, and I will not disclose which company it is, but I can only say that it is one of the companies among the diamond-level sponsors of Lenovo's Legend World conference."

The diamond sponsors of Lenovo Legend World are Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Texas Instruments.

"After listening to it and combining with Xiaomi's press conference some time ago, I only have one impression that in the IT industry, what will be long-lasting and what will be fast-decaying. Many of the things that we take for granted at the moment may not be recognized by history at all, and may become a different face. Time is cruel and fair. It has stood the test of time and there is not much that remains. In the end, it's not money, it's technology that needs to determine the length, weight, and durability of oneself in history.

Lenovo wants to prove that it has the technology, and has spent a lot of time recounting its past achievements, hoping that with the help of this conference, we are no longer the previous Lenovo, we have achieved the transformation of trade, industry and technology, and have come to the last step.

But the fact is that the gold content of the technologies they announced is not as good as the gold content of the self-developed technologies at Xiaomi's press conference. This is the harsh reality. Today, many people believe that Lenovo's Liu Ni dispute has long since settled. Today

Liu Beiyi is a huge Lenovo Group, Ni Guangnan is a scholar, and his sleeves are breezy. It's not a level contest at all, it's not a matter of grade.

Indeed, in terms of wealth, fame, and media opinion, this debate has long been decided and can never be 'corrected'. But the competition is far from over. Because the ghost of 'technology' is still hovering in this seemingly decided-out struggle, unwilling to leave. ”

(End of chapter)