Brief analysis of motives Lenovo when buying Motorola Mobility
In one of the past articles, the topic of the purchase by a Chinese manufacturer Lenovo of the mobile division of the once great Motorola from the search giant Google was touched upon. Let's try to delve deeper into the issue and consider it in retrospect.
'Motorola sold … Lenovo? Who are they anyway? How? Why? Why? '.. Such questions a year and a half ago literally flooded with comments on thematic sites and blogs. The bewilderment of the inexperienced public could be understood, the patronage of Google promised Motorola good prospects, the first attempts at writing, such as Moto X and Maker, were received with a bang all over the world, which was quite good for the apparatus assembled entirely in the USA. as well as the company itself and the new owner. As we can judge now, even then, the expansion of large Chinese players into world markets was going on, albeit often in the background. And Lenovo was one of the companies that actively bought up pretty assets and entered into mutually beneficial cooperation.
ThinkPad
This is not the first time this reaction to Lenovo has arisen. It could be seen in 2004, when a Chinese company, as part of a close alliance with IBM, acquired a division responsible for the production of PCs and laptops from them. The Chinese manufacturer was striving for the most successful entry into this market, which, most likely, determined the deal. The ThinkPad line, proven over a decade in the market, was chosen as a starting point. At that time Lenovo they had before their eyes an unsuccessful example of a merger of two companies (HP and Compaq), perhaps this led to the orderly nature of the transaction.
The companies did not expect anything good, but persistence and correct vision of the market did their job. The Chinese managed not only to maintain the traditional ThinkPad quality, but also to develop and expand the line, which contributed to the transformation Lenovo into the largest PC manufacturer in the world during a difficult 2013 for many companies.
Buy x86
Lenovo continued to systematically increase its appetite for buying other companies, and after a successful experience of cooperation with Nec and the acquisition of Medion, in January 2014 the company acquired another asset IBM – the x86 server division. The company appeared to be quite confident that the market would understand and accept this purchase, since the ThinkPad was doing quite well. However, all the cards for analysts were confused by the purchase of a mobile unit Motorola that followed literally a week later.
At that time Lenovo, it was simultaneously increasing its presence in its home market. The speed of the device's release soon put the company in second place among Chinese manufacturers. But, further to the ridiculous: such a large company did not have access to Western markets, and that's when Moto time came. By analogy with the ThinkPad, the company needed a pleasant and recognizable brand that would be snapped up like hot cakes by everyone.
Moto transformation
The implementation of the approach was in some way contributed to the time when Moto was under the “patronage” of Google, changes affected both the structure of the unit and the devices. Instead of many devices under the Razr and Droid indices, the company decided to focus on two key lines – X and G. Both series can be confidently called successful, it is no coincidence that in each of them you can still see quite good and relatively recently released devices on the market. .
In general, the end of January was rich in events that had a certain effect on the development of Andorid in general. Against the background of Google's activity around the newly acquired asset, many manufacturers were noticeably nervous, fearing that the proprietary device could confidently compete with their devices. Samsung even started developing its own OS, threatening in the worst case scenario to abandon the expansion Android to their phones. Google thought about it and on January 27, 2014, an agreement was concluded with a South Korean company for cross-licensing a certain number of patents, as well as a shift in emphasis to stock experience and pre-installed products from Google that duplicate the products of the Mountain View company. Two days later Moto was sold Lenovo, and Google only benefited from this deal, despite the apparent losses.
Restructuring strategy Lenovo Moto
In Lenovo they decided to go against public opinion and did not absorb all Motorola without a trace. The company decided to leave a pleasant brand in circulation and subsequently play on its former popularity. The Moto line is now a solution for both the premium and mid-range segment, the X, G and Z lines are suitable for a fairly wide range of users, while maintaining a passion for technical progress.
One of the new goals Lenovo is to confidently enter foreign markets, where the company's positions are not yet so strong. For these purposes, Moto smartphones are enough. During? It's hard to say, but no one cancels the fact of the extensive entry from the Chinese market to the foreign market of many other manufacturers from the Middle Kingdom – Huawei, OnePlus, Meizu, Xiaomi and others. As I already wrote, Lenovo has a great desire to gain a foothold in the market as a leader, with such a pace everything can really work out. Already now Lenovo has all the chances to take third place in the world as one of the largest vendors. Impressive? Yes of course.
Instead of output
Skeptics still do not believe in the success of the line formed by the merger of the two companies. But personally, I am quite optimistic, the experience with new devices showed a peculiar and innovative (albeit not in everything) shift towards development. In skilful 'hands' Lenovo of Moto, you can get a very good line that can win over a certain proportion of users. In my opinion, one cannot but reckon with Lenovo, the company has become truly gigantic, increasing its presence in the sectors of work chosen for a long time. Yes, and Google foresaw this situation, having obtained under the terms of the agreement shares Lenovo for almost 75o million dollars. And as practice shows, Google will not invest in a loser.