Lenovo used to be divided into two factions. One school is that Ni Guangnan focuses on "core technology" and develops new products; One school is Liu Chuanzhi, who focuses on "trade" and sells products. In the end, Ni Guangnan was forced to leave Lenovo. Since then, Lenovo has moved towards a trade-first development model, making great strides and acquiring brands such as IBM's ThinkPad.
Lenovo's core technology
According to the number of patents, Lenovo has four top laboratories in the world, and the number of patents applied for each year is above 2000+. However, these patents have not played a great role in the development and survival of enterprises, and they lack standard core patents and internationally recognized technologies. According to related reports, the core research content of Lenovo R&D Center is mold design, product optimization, feature design, etc., and the chip-level "core technology" is rarely designed.
Lenovo and Huawei were once called "China Shuang Jie", and these two companies became the pride of China's science and technology field. However, Lenovo also has a shortcoming that has been criticized by everyone, that is, influenced by Liu Chuanzhi, Lenovo has been taking "trade technology", which has led many consumers to say that Lenovo has no core technology and is a computer assembly factory.
A R&D investment may not necessarily produce technology, but there must be no technology without R&D investment, so a company's R&D investment represents its emphasis on technology. In absolute terms, Lenovo's current investment in this area is not small among domestic enterprises.
Of course, with input, there will still be output. According to the online ranking of 20 18 national invention patents, Lenovo ranked seventh, with 1807 patents, even far exceeding Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, which invested more in R&D than Lenovo. Is Lenovo's R&D ability so strong?
Several major accessories of a computer are: display screen, processor, memory stick and operating system. At present, Lenovo's display screen mostly comes from Japan and South Korea, its processor comes from Intel, its memory chip generally comes from Korea and Japan, and its operating system comes from Microsoft. The main core components are not produced by ourselves, so it is not an exaggeration to say that Lenovo is an assembly machine.
What are the main technical patents generated by Lenovo's R&D investment? According to online search, it is mainly about computer cooling, internal layout of the host, chassis, battery and so on. But these are not core technologies at all. It does not have much influence in the industry and is not widely used.
It can be said that if Lenovo, like Huawei, is included in the so-called "entity list" by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the US Department of Commerce, Lenovo computers will basically be scrapped, because none of the core components can be produced by itself.
Ni Guangnan, the former chief engineer of Lenovo (academician of China Academy of Engineering), told the media directly on 20 17 that Lenovo has become a production workshop+marketing company to some extent, which is the last thing he wants to see.