Opinion | Lenovo thinks high-end, in-house

Lenovo's splitting off of its Think brand looks like a smart move to develop the premium PC market, but its decision to move most of its PC manufacturing in-house looks like a step backward.

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Lenovo may divide its Think and Lenovo brands to target different segments of the market. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:35am, 8 Jan 2013Updated: 10:38am, 8 Jan 2013

A couple of interesting items on Lenovo (0992.HK) are making the headlines these last few days, as the company tries to figure out how to hold onto its crown as the world's biggest PC maker after taking the top spot from longtime holder Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) last year.

The first and more intriguing of the moves is seeing Lenovo split its PC products into two distinct groups – one a higher-end product centered on its Think brand and the other a more mainstream product based on its older Lenovo brand. The second item has media reporting that Lenovo is moving towards a model that will see it make all of its own computers in-house, in contrast to the current industry model that sees most major PC brands outsource their manufacturing to other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

I'll admit that I'm cautiously optimistic about the brand-splitting move for reasons that I'll explain shortly; but I'm far less excited about the second move towards 100 per cent in-house production, which to me seems to go against every major industry trend in the tech sector and thus could be doomed for problems.

Let's start with the brand-splitting news, which will see Lenovo divide itself into the Think and Lenovo brands to target different segments of the market. The move, detailed by Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing in a New Year's email, will take effect in April and see the Think business centered in the US while the Lenovo brand business will be run out of China. Yang explained that the move is designed to give the Think team room to build a premium brand that can ultimately compete with the likes of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL).

From my perspective, this looks like a good move that could finally help Lenovo take a bigger share of the premium computer market where it has traditionally been quite weak. Lenovo inherited the Think brand with its landmark purchase of IBM's (NYSE: IBM) PC business in 2005, and it looks like this move is designed to keep the former IBM business as a separate unit that will be run out of America.

That's important because IBM traditionally was a premium PC brand, but the premium image of its ThinkPad computers suffered quite a bit after the Lenovo purchase. By giving the Think unit more autonomy and allowing it to be run out of a major western market instead of China, Lenovo is clearly hoping it can return the brand to its more upscale image. Only time will tell if the strategy works, but I would give it a better than 50 per cent chance of success and wouldn't be surprised to see Think computers reclaim their place as a highly-respected brand within the next five years.

Meantime, the second bit of news isn't all that surprising to me since I was already quite puzzled by the move in 2011 that led up to this rumoured latest decision that will see Lenovo aim to manufacture all of its PCs rather than outsourcing the work to OEMs. That particular move saw Lenovo form a PC manufacturing joint venture with Taiwan's Compal (Taipei: 2353), one of the world's leading OEM PC makers.