Lenovo's "seven sins": Public opinion or its own morbid state?

After being listed at the market level, he was kicked out of the Hang Seng Index constituent stocks. Deep in the "5G voting gate" incident, Lenovo's public development and the subsequent support of 100 entrepreneurs helped to spread the "war" to Liu Chuan-he. Criticism of Lenovo's "Trade and Industry Skill". Subsequently, Lenovo was once again burst into a "vote against the pre-installed domestic system," although Lenovo denies it, but still fall into public opinion denounced. In recent days, there have been media speculation that "Qualcomm has started charging 5G patent fees and Lenovo should be responsible for this."

Under the influence of so many negative news from Lenovo, Lenovo’s national brand image has been severely damaged. Many netizens have expressed that they do not buy Lenovo’s products anymore. The managers of many small and medium-sized enterprises I’ve known also have expressed that companies will not Repurchase Lenovo products. Many netizens bluntly said that "Lenovo is still a little bit better."

For a time, critical association seems to have become a kind of "political correctness". Lenovo's death is the "what people want." However, all this really is Lenovo’s “causes oneself to pick up”, or is someone deliberately “guiding public opinion”?

Here's the author's analysis of the "seven sins" of Lenovo's illness:

First, 5G voting events

Netizens believe that Lenovo's Qualcomm in the 5G standard voting did not support Huawei, causing Huawei to lose in the short code. So think Lenovo's move is "not patriotic" or even "treating the country!"

It can be said that the "5G Voting Incident" is the trigger for the negative public opinion outbreak of Lenovo.

Core Intelligence in the previous "Ren Zhengfei behind Liu Chuanzhi: Lenovo 5G standard voting event ultimate analysis! "In one article, a more detailed introduction to Lenovo's 5G voting incident before and after the consequences.

In fact, Lenovo only supported the LDPC solution for the selection of 5G eMBB data channel long and short-term code only at the 86th meeting, and opposed the Huawei-supported LDPC+Polar solution. However, Lenovo's behavior at this meeting did not affect the final result because only the LDPC was identified as the eMBB data channel long code at the 86th meeting, and the short code was left to discuss at 87 meetings.

At the following 87 meetings, Lenovo voted to support Polar, which is the main push, regardless of the eMBB data short code or the eMBB control code.

Although at the 87th meeting, for eMBB data short code competition, Polar code was supported by 55 companies such as Huawei and Lenovo, and LDPC codes were only supported by 31 companies. However, Huawei-supported Polar codes still failed.

On the one hand, the 31 companies that support LDPC have higher component weight. On the other hand, the negotiation mechanism within 3GPP makes the LDPC code and Polar code reach a compromise between the two camps. The Polar code supported by Huawei camp becomes the control channel code. The LDPC supported by the Qualcomm camp ended up as short data channels.

Dr. Huang Ying, vice president of Lenovo Group and head of Lenovo's 5G research, said in an interview with AI Finance, that any resolution or new technology specification formed by 3GPP must be based on consensus. If any company opposes a conclusion, they must discuss it again until an agreement is reached. If no agreement can be reached in the end, a higher-level plenary meeting will be held and an official vote will be adopted. The voting rate exceeds 71%. However, according to his understanding, in the 20 years since its establishment, 3GPP has not seen any cases that have risen to the point where all voting is needed to resolve the dispute. Usually the parties compromise and finally reach consensus.

Prior to this, many netizens believed that at the 86th meeting on voting for long and short eMBB data channel codes, LDPC received support from 29 companies and Polar received support from 27 companies. If Lenovo+Motorola moves, the two votes did not cast LDPC. Voted for Polar, then the Polar camp will lead the one vote, which may eventually make the LDPC+Polar program win at the 86th meeting.

However, judging from the previous 3GPP decision-making mechanism, even if the Polar camp took a lead, it would not be able to win directly at the 86th meeting. Because a small lead in the number of votes does not affect the key to 3GPP's decision-making. What's more, at the 86th meeting, the LDPC camp led the Polar camp with two votes. The 3GPP did not directly determine the LDPC as the data short code, but left it to the next meeting for confirmation. Therefore, it is not hard to understand why the Polar code was supported by 55 companies at the 87th meeting, LDPC codes were only supported by 31 companies, and the Polar camp led the case. Eventually, both camps reached LDPC as the data short code. Resolutions.

Returning to Lenovo’s behavior in the 5G voting, Lenovo’s mistake was to start from the perspective of corporate interests and chose to support the Qualcomm camp’s leading data-length code single LDPC solution, not with most of China. Vendors stand together to support the LDPC+Polar solution. This is also the key to Lenovo being blamed by netizens during this incident. So at this point, it is completely understandable that Internet users can associate Lenovo. However, the degree of rise to "treating the country" is a bit too high.

After Lenovo's 5G standard voting incident was dug out, Lenovo's previous statement did not positively acknowledge that it did support the Qualcomm camp's LDPC program at the 86th meeting. Instead, it adopted an evasive approach, only emphasizing that it had voted for Huawei. Supported Polar code. This has further aggravated the netizens' criticism of Lenovo and the spread of various versions of rumors, and even returned Lenovo to the hat of "selling the country." This also directly hurt the nerve of Lenovo's founder Liu Chuanzhi.

In the end, it directly led to the actions of Liu Chuanzhi Association executives issued by Lenovo executives! Swearing to win the Lenovo Honor Defend Battle article once again pushed the Lenovo 5G voting event to the focus of public opinion.

Recently, the topic of "Qualcomm began charging 5G patent fees and Lenovo should be responsible for this" was escalated by some media. It was actually a further upgrade on the basis of this "Lenovo 5G voting event."

In fact, as early as in late November of last year, Qualcomm announced the charges for 5G patents, which were not announced recently. The fees are: 2.75% for single-mode 5G mobile phones and 3.25% for multi-mode (3G/4G/5G) mobile phones.

These media think that due to the support of Lenovo, Qualcomm-backed LDPC has become the standard for 5G data channels, which also makes Qualcomm have more capital to charge 5G patent fees, so Lenovo needs to be responsible for this.

But in fact, Qualcomm proposed such a patent fee standard based on its huge patent database, of which LDPC patents accounted for only a small part.

According to industry figures, Samsung has the most patents in the field of LDPC. The most patented products in Polar are Nokia and Qualcomm. In contrast, Huawei holds similar numbers of patents in both LDPC and Polar, and neither of them is a leading group. In other words, if Polar becomes the data channel short code standard, then 5G patents that can be charged to Qualcomm may be more.

(Global Polar Patent Distribution)

In addition, according to the data, US companies have the largest number of Polar patents registered in the world, at 1,033, followed by 607 in Japan, third, 435 in South Korea, and fourth, 303 in China.

Therefore, even if the Polar code wins in the 5G data channel short code competition, it does not mean that Chinese companies will pay less 5G royalties.

In conclusion, Polar is not invented in China, and there are not many Polar patents in China. It is not that LDPC wins. China will have to pay 5G royalties, and Polar will win. China will be able to pay less 5G royalties. The reason why China chose to push Polar is because Polar is relatively new (proposed in 2010). There are more patents that can be tapped in the future. We are more likely to have the opportunity to catch up in this piece.

Second, "voting against pre-installed domestic system" incident

Following the Lenovo 5G voting incident, on May 21st, a certain self-media magazine released an article titled "Exclusive Analysis: Re-Cast a Key! Lenovo stifled the domestic operating system article, referring to Lenovo’s purchase of computer products at a central purchasing center in mid-May this year. At the meeting of PC suppliers, Lenovo voted against the pre-installed domestic operating system. The domestic system lost 3:4.

It is said that at this procurement meeting, in addition to Lenovo’s opposition to pre-installed domestic operating systems, there are Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and Asus, while supporters include Tongfang, Haier, and Dell.

The article criticized that even Dell has supported China's pre-installation of its own R&D operating system on its domestic computers. Lenovo, which is known as a national brand, has chosen to oppose it and “killed domestic operating systems” (this article has been deleted).

Afterwards, some media such as the observers network also followed suit and reported the matter (now Observer Network has been deleted), saying that this matter is true.

However, the fact is not the case:

According to follow-up media reports, the incident took place at 9:00 am on May 16, and the Central Governmental Government Procurement Center convened the "2018 Annual Batch Concentration Purchasing Supplier Conference." The topic is "Consolidation procurement configuration standards and scoring rules."

In the agenda concerning the “grading standards for desktop computers”, the meeting proposed “pre-installed domestic operating systems”. The core of the meeting was the evaluation criteria for computer desktop product configurations 1 to 6 and notebook product configurations 1 to 5 of the Central Bank. Do you add points to pre-installed domestic operating systems? The related content of the opinion draft is: Responsive product promises to be able to install the domestic brand Linux operating system to get 1 point, otherwise do not score; respond to the product factory pre-installed domestic brand Linux operating system to get a point, otherwise do not score. It should be noted that the pre-installed domestic brand Linux operating system here refers to the pre-installed Windows system.

It is said that after soliciting opinions, the relevant contents were changed to: Responsive product promises to be able to install a domestic brand Linux operating system to get a point, otherwise do not score.

The reason for the change is that among the seven vendors participating in the meeting, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and Asus are against preinstalling Linux, while the other three companies, Haier and Dell, support Linux preinstalled.

On the evening of May 21, Lenovo specially held a conference call for online coverage. The following day, it issued a statement specifically for the matter.

According to the Lenovo statement, on the morning of May 16th, the Central Mining Center would routinely seek advice from vendors on the allocation of standards and scoring rules, including one for pre-installing Windows+ domestic Linux dual systems. The four vendors, including Lenovo, proposed using a separate domestic Linux system, and therefore opposed the dual-system solution, but this is not opposed to pre-installed domestic systems.

Lenovo also emphasized that it has always supported the development of domestically-operated operating systems. The reason why we recommend adopting a separate domestic Linux system is that this type of solution will not cause interference from other systems and will be more stable.

Liu Zheng, vice president of Lenovo Group and general manager of commercial operations in China, said: “What needs to be emphasized repeatedly is that this is not a vote but only an opinion. The opinions of the meeting need to be submitted to the Ministry of Finance for approval before they can confirm the execution... Manufacturers only have the right to propose. There is no decision right. It is impossible to form a resolution based on the opinions of the manufacturers and it is necessary to go through the government procurement process."

So, to this point, the incident is basically clear!

First of all, this meeting is only a meeting for government agencies to solicit manufacturers' opinions. Pre-loading Linux is only an option for purchasing points, and it only adds one point, so there is no such meeting that determines whether the follow-up government will purchase or not. Pre-installed PC with domestic Linux system.

Second, as a government procurement, the final decision to make a decision is certainly a government department. How could one get Lenovo's supplier to decide whether to eventually pre-install domestic Linux? In this incident, Lenovo was completely unable to "kill domestically produced operating systems!" Even if Lenovo has this ability, the government really decided to purchase PCs with pre-installed domestic Linux systems. Lenovo does not support it. Is it not supported by Dell, Haier and Dell? Lenovo is still unable to "kill domestically produced operating systems!"

In addition, Lenovo also clarified that Lenovo voted against the "pre-installed Windows + domestic Linux dual system" program in the event, but supported a separate pre-installed domestic Linux system program.

Therefore, judging from this incident itself, it is indeed safe to say that Lenovo "killed domestic operating systems." Without understanding the basic facts, it began to draw conclusions. Lenovo's opposition to the pre-installed Windows+ domestic Linux dual system is also understandable by the author.

First, the pre-installed system means that the device is pre-loaded into a system before it leaves the factory. Obviously, whether it is installed Windows systems, or domestic Linux systems are to pay. And if you preinstall Windows + domestic Linux system then obviously the cost will be higher.

Second, if both Windows + domestic Linux systems are pre-installed at the same time, the two systems may interfere with each other and the stability will be poor. For example, in a financial-related government department, a transaction failure may result in the loss of tens of millions of yuan.

Third, the dual-system hard disk storage space is larger than a single system, and the system partition requirements are also different. The Windows partition format is FAT32 or NTFS, while Linux's file system is ext. The two file systems are completely different, and one partition can only consist of one file system, so if you want to install dual systems, you must install them in two separate partitions. Take the current domestic operating system - in-depth Linux 15.5 as an example, the system installation package size is more than 3G, and the installation also requires a separate partition, the size of the general 6-10G, in order to install software in the future, the use of stored files, may Need more than 20G. In the Windows system, the Linux ext partition cannot be used. That is, if the user only uses the Windows system, the 10-20G storage space is wasted.

Fourth, according to the normal situation, the civilian computer operators in the government departments may only use 99% of the Windows system. If you really want to use the pre-installed domestic Linux system, you must invest a lot of manpower and resources. Training is used. If this cannot be done, then even if domestic Linux is pre-installed, it is meaningless.

Fifth, in terms of application ecology, domestic Linux is actually worse than Windows by a hundred thousand miles. Of course, for ordinary office applications, domestic Linux should be able to meet the basic needs. However, for some departments that require the use of specific windows software, Linux may indeed encounter problems.

In addition, if the country really wants to support domestically produced operating systems, then it is entirely possible to directly request the purchase of PCs with pre-installed domestic Linux operating systems at a certain percentage, and to the relevant government departments of PCs that can use the domestic Linux operating systems. There is no need for a PC vendor to vote. The development of domestic systems for so many years, the country does indeed have to support the domestic operating system, but it did not play any effect, a lot of procurement back to uninstall or uninstalled Windows. Of course, the military and other national core secretarial departments are definitely in need of domestically produced operating systems. However, for the government's first-line ordinary office workers, they are still more inclined to choose the Windows system.

Finally, it needs to be added that at present, many domestic operating systems are mostly based on the Linux kernel. Although Linux is open source, the major copyrights and leading large companies are mostly American companies, although Chinese system manufacturers have developed based on the current Linux kernel version. The copyright of the system belongs to China, but the United States can prohibit Chinese manufacturers from using the next new version of the Linux kernel. This will also have a major impact on domestic Linux systems. This is just like the Android system. Although the Android system is open source, the US government can still prohibit ZTE from using it.

Therefore, the domestic operating system is still a long way to go!

Third, ignore national emotions

For this issue, the most talked about on the Internet is that, on September 18, 2017, Lenovo launched a price reduction promotion campaign in Taiwan for Rising Sun and Japanese samurai. What day is 918? As long as it is Chinese, few people do not know about the “918 Incident”? Obviously, Lenovo’s branch office in Taiwan was very outdated at this time to celebrate the sacrificial offering of the Japanese samurai. Even if it is the private behavior of the Taiwan branch, Lenovo has an unshirkable management responsibility.

In addition, the previous official website of Lenovo had also juxtaposed Taiwan with China, paying attention not to the name of Taiwan or Taiwan.

In addition, this time, Lenovo was the only Chinese company to form a Qualcomm team at the 86th meeting in the 5G voting and did not support the Chinese company represented by Huawei. It is exactly that that stands out from the crowd, although Lenovo stands on its own. From the standpoint of choice, it did not affect the final results. It is understandable, but it also reflects Lenovo's "enlightenment" in some decisions to a certain extent.

Yes, if Lenovo is a U.S. producer, how to make a decision, as long as it is not illegal, the American people may not be too concerned about. However, as a Chinese manufacturer, if one's consciousness is not high enough, it is indeed a big problem.

Lenovo's official website corrected the problem of the expression of Taiwan's name

Of course, many of the above problems have been rectified by Lenovo after being exposed.

Fourth, the long-term internal and external price difference

In fact, for many ordinary netizens, not many people really care about what 5G technology standards, they are more concerned about the long-term existence of Lenovo products, the issue of internal and external spreads, that is why the same product abroad is much cheaper than domestic? For this reason, Lenovo has always had a joke about “American Conscience’s Conscience”.

According to the data summarized by netizens very early on, Lenovo's same product, the prices in various countries and regions abroad (where the local tax rates are taken into account), are only 58%-80% of the domestic mainstream prices (note that there is no consideration here. 17% VAT), so even taking into account the effects of tax removal, foreign countries are also 10%-42% cheaper than domestic ones.

On the day of the announcement of Lenovo’s founder Liu Chuanzhi, there was a 33% discount on the U.S. market by users who sent texts until Lenovo’s products. This again stimulated the nerves of netizens. Again.

If we say that taking this official promotional price to compare the domestic price is unfair, then let's take a look at the price comparison during the non-promotion period.

ThinkPadX1Carbon2018 for example, the same product, Lenovo's domestic price as high as 29,999 yuan, while the country's tax-free price is only 2331 US dollars, or about 14,887 yuan.

In addition to the Chinese version of the screen shrinks the point, the other configuration is the same with the US version, taking into account the domestic and foreign price comparison, 29,999 yuan need to deduct 17% of the value-added tax, then the Chinese version is actually 25,640 yuan, this price is the United States does not include tax price 1.73 times. In the case of a shrinking display of key parts, the same domestic product is more expensive than abroad at about 10,753 yuan (the domestic price is about 72% higher than that of foreign countries). This huge spread is indeed unacceptable.

Therefore, the majority of domestic users Tucao Lenovo's internal and external spread issues are not without reason.

So, what exactly is Lenovo’s product price difference between inside and outside?

The author believes that this mainly includes the following aspects:

1. Lenovo's PC has a strong competitive advantage in the domestic market and its market share is relatively high, with data indicating that it has reached about 40%. Especially in government procurement, there is data showing that Lenovo has a 70% share. As we all know, the higher the market share, the greater the right to speak, so Lenovo has its own "pricing power" in the country, Lenovo does not need to compete for domestic market share through price cuts. In overseas markets such as the United States, the competition between Lenovo and HP is fierce. According to the data, Hewlett-Packard won 34% of the US market in the first quarter of this year, ranking first and having a dominant advantage. Therefore, in order to enhance the market competitive advantage, Lenovo may be more inclined to compete for market share through the form of price competition.

2. As mentioned earlier, Lenovo purchased this piece of government, which accounted for nearly 70% of the total. As we all know, government procurement is often a piece of cake with relatively large corporate profits. Coupled with the background of Lenovo's state-owned assets and Lenovo's "pricing power" in the domestic market, Lenovo naturally will not be willing to actively lower prices.

3. In terms of channel construction, the U.S. PC market is mainly based on Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and other large platforms. There are almost no intermediate links, so there is less investment in channel construction, channel costs are lower, and domestically produced these large platforms are disposable. The purchase volume is also very high, and it will cost low, especially in the "Black Friday" and "Christmas season", will combine the manufacturers to take a large proportion of discount sales. Relatively speaking, domestic agents and offline channels are still one of the major sales channels of PCs, and the construction and maintenance of channels are all at a reasonable cost.

4. In terms of tax rate policy, domestic PC product prices are required to add 17% value-added tax, while consumers in the United States are borne by consumers in addition to commodity prices.

As early as in 2013, Yang Yuanqing had “highlighted” the taxation at the CPPCC group meeting and stated that VAT and tariffs have caused the price of the goods to “different from inside and outside”. Yang Yuanqing also said at the two national conferences in 2016: “Why Lenovo computers are cheaper in the United States than in China, because China's 17% VAT must be added to the pricing, but the gross margin of products is only 15%.” Yang Yuanqing said, There is no value-added tax in Hong Kong, China, so the "parallel imports" business continues to be hot.

In addition, domestic exports can enjoy export tax rebates. Export-oriented companies often choose to pay back part of the tax rebate, directly reducing the price of products in foreign countries in order to compete for overseas orders.

The above-mentioned problems in the construction of channels plus the tax rate and other factors, this is why the United States Wal-Mart can often buy low-cost terrible tablet PCs, but it is impossible at home.

For example, the 7-inch MediaTek MT8127 quad-core tablet sold on Wal-Mart on Black Friday in 2014 was sold at US$29, or approximately RMB185. At that time, such a configuration of the flat panel on the domestic network platform, the price will be 349 yuan -399 yuan or so, even at the time when the domestic launch of the lowest price in the Jingdong Rubik's Cube U25GT Super Edition price is also 299 yuan (just the screen Is the IPS screen, which adds a bit of cost).

5. The difference in spending power, the spending power of European and American countries is higher than that of the domestic population. This is why discounting overseas high-priced products will directly and effectively stimulate sales. In China, even if 30,000 computers are discounted to 15,000, they will not buy too many people. This is also why we can go to Lenovo in the low-end product line between the inside and outside the spread is not large, but the higher the price difference between the inside and outside the product will be greater.

Here said so much, not to help Lenovo exculpate, but from the perspective of objective reality to analyze the reasons for the formation of spread issues, because not only Lenovo's products exist inside and outside the spread of the problem, including Lenovo, including many domestic manufacturers Products have the same problem that the products abroad are cheaper than domestic ones. However, Lenovo's high-end products have higher prices, so the gap between the price quotas is even higher (in fact, I would like to ask, even if the above reasons, but how high the price of high-end products will be so high?).

Do not believe that you go to see Maotai's internal and external spreads, before the domestic 1499 yuan 500ml Feitai Maotai (Jingdong platform is now the lowest rose to 1688 yuan), the United Kingdom as long as 100 pounds, together 843 yuan. In some countries, the selling price is less than half of that in China.

Or take a look at this Huawei MateBookE.

The same configuration Huawei MateBookE, the United States Amazon price of 699 US dollars, about 4460 yuan, the domestic official flagship store price of Huawei 7388 yuan, the spread between the two also reached nearly 3,000 yuan, compared with foreign prices higher than 65.6 %.

So the question is, if the same product is cheaper than the domestic foreign price, it can be said to be "the conscience of the US imperialism" and "not patriotic". So is Huawei and Maotai "the conscience of the US imperialism" and "unpatriotic"? Obviously, the answer is obviously negative.

Of course, the author needs to add that the domestic government, corporate procurement will generally purchase Lenovo relatively high-end ThinkPad products, these customers are not too sensitive to the price, which is a big profit cake of Lenovo. Therefore, Lenovo's mid-to-high-end product line, even if it does not cut prices, the order is very stable. Even if the mid-to-high-end product line is cut in price, ordinary users will not have many people to buy, so it will not bring much improvement to domestic sales. This may be because Lenovo’s mid- to high-end products have long-term large price gap between inside and outside. One of the root causes.

Fifth, take the money earned in the Chinese market to subsidize the United States and the United States?

Before many articles on the Internet were based on Lenovo’s 2017 financial report data, the complaints were that domestic companies earned money to subsidize foreign losses, and they subsidized US imperialism (otherwise, the United States sold so much less than China).

According to the financial report for the fourth quarter and the full year of fiscal year 2017 released by Lenovo last year as of March 31, 2017, Lenovo Group’s total revenue for fiscal year 2017 was 43.305 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year decline of 4%. The net profit was 535 million U.S. dollars.

From the perspective of regional revenue contribution, Lenovo’s China region’s market revenue was approximately US$11.794 billion, and its pre-tax net profit was approximately US$539 million. The total pre-tax net profit of Lenovo Group from external customers in fiscal year 2017 was only US$295 million.

As a result, there was “28% of domestic sales (actually 27.4%), but Lenovo contributed all profits and subsidized all overseas losses and subsidized US imperialism”, further strengthening readers’ opinions. The idea of ​​"Mei-di's conscience" and Lenovo's "treating the country."

However, in fact, we carefully look at the above financial reports. Lenovo’s losses in fiscal year 2017 mainly came from the European/Middle East/Africa market and the Asia-Pacific market. Among them, the European/Middle East/Africa market suffered the largest loss, and the pre-tax net profit loss reached approximately 337 million U.S. dollars. The previously low-profile sales strategy of Lenovo in the US market, which was criticized by everyone, is actually profitable. It can be seen that Lenovo’s revenue in the Americas market was US$13.04 billion, and its pre-tax net profit contribution was approximately US$157 million, which was more than double the year-on-year increase.

Even in the fiscal year 2018, the pre-tax net profit in the Americas fell sharply, and it was also about $71.75 million. However, at the same time, we can also see that the pre-tax net profit of the European/Middle East/African market and the Asia-Pacific market also narrowed from the previous loss of 337 million U.S. dollars to 62.38 million U.S. dollars. Of course, the loss in the Asia-Pacific region is doubled, from the original loss of $65.16 million to $134 million. But overall, the overseas losses have been substantially reduced.

The latest 2018 financial report shows that Lenovo's three main businesses have also improved overall profitability. Although Lenovo’s mobile business suffered a large loss in the domestic market, its performance in Latin America and North America’s advantageous markets remained strong. In the fourth quarter, sales in Latin America increased by 23%, and sales in North America increased by 54%. Among them, Moto-branded smartphones continued to grow significantly in Latin America, with sales rising by 40%; in North America, Lenovo’s smartphone sales increased by 57% year-on-year. However, due to the slower-than-expected progress in the mid- to high-end smartphone market, Lenovo's profit margin before the tax in the Americas region was only 0.5%, compared to 1.2% in the same period of last year.

Therefore, Lenovo did not actually use the domestic profits to subsidize the U.S. market. This figure does not indicate that Lenovo is the "conscience of the US imperialism." However, Lenovo did indeed use domestic money to subsidize losses in the European/Middle East/African market and the Asia Pacific market.

Six, do not pay attention to research and development, there is no core technology

According to Tencent's statistics after consulting Lenovo and Huawei Financial Statistics, Lenovo’s sales revenue has continued to increase in recent years, but its net profit has been kept at a low level, at most 5 billion RMB, and profit margins have mostly remained at 2. -3% or so. While profit margins continue to remain low, Lenovo’s investment in R&D continues to be low, at an annual rate of only RMB 8-90 billion, and its share in total revenue has remained at around 2-3% for a long time.

In contrast, Huawei's investment in research and development is very large. According to data, Huawei's sales in 2017 were 603.6 billion yuan, net profit was 47.5 billion, profitability was 7.87%, and R&D investment was 89.7 billion, accounting for 14.9% of total sales. It can be said that Huawei is not only more than ten times more expensive than Lenovo in terms of revenue. Lenovo's investment in research and development is even smaller than Huawei's. Even with the 2013 data, Huawei's R&D investment was as high as 31.6 billion, which was 6.87 times that of Lenovo's 4.6 billion R&D investment in the same period.

This is Lenovo's long-term "trade and technology" line caused by the ills, Lenovo seems to grow bigger and bigger business, but it is big but not strong. After the ZTE incident and the 5G standard voting incident, this issue was even more significantly exposed to everyone. In the eyes of the majority of netizens, Lenovo does not have any "core technology" at all, and it is even referred to by netizens as a "PC assembly factory without technical content."

Indeed, Lenovo's investment in R&D is minimal, and the technical strength of Huawei is a huge gap compared to Huawei. However, if Lenovo is only a "PC builder with no technical content," then there is some emphasis. Have you ever seen any other PC manufacturer with no technical content to make it the world’s No. 1 PC maker (now falling to second place)?

In fact, from the perspective of the number of patents, the number of Lenovo's patents should be quite a few. At the 2016 Lenovo TechWorld conference, Lenovo CTO and He Zhiqiang, president of Lenovo Ventures Group, said in an interview with the media that Lenovo's annual patent registration amounted to two to three thousand. However, the quality of the patent may not be so satisfactory.

According to an older information display:

As of March 19, 2006, Lenovo applied for 1,670 patents in China. Of these, 712 were invention patents (including 15 PCT patent applications), which accounted for 42% of the total number of applications, and 192 were authorized, accounting for 11% of the total number of applications. The number of utility model patent applications was 513 (including 1 PCT patent application) and the number of design patent applications was 445, which accounted for 31% and 27% of the total number of patent applications.

From this analysis, we can see that Lenovo's patent application work is difficult to compare with some well-known multinational companies. Even if compared with Huawei's domestic companies (1,551 patent applications in 2003 and 426 foreign patents), it is not difficult to see Lenovo’s patents. The number is small, the proportion of patents for inventions is low, and the proportion of authorizations is very low. At the same time, the proportion of PCT applications is also minimal, only 1%, which also affects the speed of Lenovo's application for patents and patents in other countries.

In the aspect of patent quality, Lenovo has formed a certain advantage in terms of "heat dissipation and noise reduction" in the field of computer manufacturing. However, Lenovo's technical level, or patent level, is still far worse than the world-class IT companies. Even if Lenovo's most proud of the "IGRS technology", technical barriers are not high, for companies with stronger technical strength, "a point to break."

(Source: "the process of globalization to build Lenovo patent strategy", author: Huazhong University of Science and Technology Li Tang Jie)

However, it is worth noting that in 2005 Lenovo acquired IBM's global personal computer business, which resulted in more than 1,500 patents (the number of specific invention patents is unknown), which also to a certain extent solved Lenovo's lack of overseas patents and patents of low quality problem.

According to statistics, in 2011, the total number of invention patents owned by Lenovo Group has reached more than 2,000 (I wonder if there are some invention patents acquired from IBM). At that time, the annual patent licensing revenue has been as high as 30 million to 4,000. Ten thousand U.S. dollars. So from this perspective, Lenovo did have core technology at the time.

In 2014, Lenovo purchased Motorola’s mobile phone business for US$2.9 billion, which is another important acquisition since Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s personal computer business. After the acquisition, the Motorola brand, trademark, 3,500 employees, and relationships with more than 50 operators worldwide will be included in the Lenovo mobile business.

However, in terms of patents, Lenovo received only 2,000 patents and the remaining patents were retained by Google. Although the Lenovo mobile phone business can continue to use these patents, ownership is owned by Google. Two years ago, Google acquired more than 17,000 patents when it acquired Motorola for $12.5 billion. It's not hard to imagine that Google's own reservations should all be high-value core technology patents.

From this point of view, the value of Lenovo's acquisition is more reflected in the brand and market size, Lenovo did not take in the negotiations, how much more valuable core technology patents. This may also be a mistake made by Lenovo.

So, in conclusion, we can not think of R&D and lack of core technical strengths, but we can't ask Lenovo to have as strong R&D strength and core technology as Huawei. Because the routes they used to take were different in the first place, they have caused huge differences between the two parties. We can't use Huawei as a standard to measure all companies. Huawei was able to become the current Huawei, but also experienced the hardships of nine deaths before it came to this day. There were indeed many Chinese companies that also followed the same R&D path as Huawei, but most of them were shot on the beach by big waves. Otherwise, it is impossible to have only one "Huawei" now. Even ZTE, after encountering U.S. sanctions, has not been “not having core technology” by netizens?

So we need to correctly understand the definition of "core technology" itself.核心技术其实就是特定时间段内的一种技术壁垒，因为技术是不断向前发展的，随着时间的推移，新的技术出现，所以旧的技术壁垒就可能被打破。另外这个技术壁垒的强度也是相对的，相对于技术更强的厂商来说，一些企业的“核心技术”就变得不那么核心了。

七、坚持走“贸工技”路线

在此次联想5G投票事件爆发之后，也引发了业内对于联想“贸工技”路线的大讨论。而广大网友在批判联想这个走“贸工技”的“反面教材”的同时，都会拿出华为这个坚持走“技工贸”路线的“正面教材”来作为对比。

近期饭统戴老板刷屏的文章《联想和华为的1994年》，更是将联想的“贸工技”与华为“技工贸”路线之争推向了高潮。

1984年，联想在北京中科院计算所的一间传达室成立。1987年华为深圳的一间破旧民房里成立。两家企业在运营之初都是主要是做贸易，联想是代理／销售汉卡、微机产品，华为则是代理销售电话交换机。

1990年，华为通过自主研发，研制出了低端的BH03交换机。1991年，华为又研制出了能够容纳500个电话用户的HJD48交换机。随后，这两款产品均获得了很大的成功。1993年10月，华为又推出了支持2000用户的C＆C082000交换机，虽然上市初期遇到了很多问题，但是1994年初就都顺利解决了。

1992年，联想在总工倪光南的牵头下也开始进军交换机市场，研发自己的交换机产品。1994年，联想自主研发的首款交换机LEX大获成功（可以支持5000个用户），并且在市场上确定了非常出色的成绩。

但是随后，联想交换机业务部门遭遇了资金问题，在形式一片大好的情况下，柳传志放弃了对于交换机业务的支持，将更多精力转向了PC市场，最终导致该业务的死亡。而与此同时，华为的可容纳10000用户的C＆C08万门机项目则得到了任正非的全力支持，产品上市后，横扫中国电信市场，为华为日后在电信市场的崛起打下了坚实基础。

同样还是在1994年，柳传志还扼杀了另一个“自主研发”项目。

1994年，倪光南在联想领导层参与下与复旦大学和长江计算机公司达成合资建立芯片设计中心（“联海微电子设计中心”）的意向，准备大力发展集成电路芯片设计能力。倪光南对这项被称为“中国芯”的工程倾注了极大的热情，却被柳传志当场泼冷水：“有高科技产品，不一定能卖得出去，只有卖出去，才有钱”。最后次项目在即将开张之前夭折。

后来倪光南回忆说：

至此，联想与华为的路线开始朝着两个完全不同的方向走去。

虽然，联想与华为最后都成为了世界500强企业，成为了中国民族企业的骄傲，但是不论是从营收、利润还是技术实力上来看，联想与华为之间还是差了好几个联想。而在业内人士来看，起点更高联想现在之所以与华为有如此之大的差距，其根本原因正是长期坚持“贸工技”路线造成的，没有核心技术，导致联想只能是大而不强。

正如某位业内人士所说，如果联想自己拥有足够多的5G通信专利，那么在此次5G投票事件当中，无论联想自己选择支持哪种5G编码标准都是正确的。是联想自己一步步走向了今天的“败局”。

当然，我们并不能简单的以现在的结果来论英雄。因为现在说的很多东西可能都是事后诸葛亮，在当时的那个时代背景下，进口国外产品在国内做贸易利润丰厚、风险也较小。而相比之下，自主研发不仅风险巨大，而且利润也并不见得比做贸易来的高。因此，我们并不能说当时联想选择“贸工技”路线就是错误。

有网友就评论称，联想走“贸工技”路线也并不是错误的选择，但问题是联想的“贸工技”路线也一直没有走到底，而是停留在“贸”这个阶段了。

另外也有一位网友＠辛鑫在《拨开迷雾看联想：柳传志的危机来自何方》一文的下方评论称，“温铁军教授曾经说过一个大致的节点，那就是2000年，在2000年之前，我国处于资本不足阶段，这个阶段如果联想走技工贸路线，很可能早就被拍在沙滩上了，但是2000年之后，我国开始处于资本过剩阶段，这一阶段完全有条件走倪光南院士的路线，另外值得指出的是华为就是从2003年开始研发手机的。可是联想呢？”

2014年，柳传志在接受媒体采访时就表示，“联想从一开始就明白自己干的就是'毛巾里拧水'的买卖”，联想就善于做这个工作。

什么是“毛巾里拧水”的买卖？不就是做贸易，做买卖，从中赚差价吗！

显然，到了2014年这个时间点，联想仍然将自己的路线定位在“贸工技”上，并没有开始向“技工贸”转变。而这也应该联想需要去反思的。

小结：

通过芯智讯对于联想近期备受外界诟病的“七宗罪”的解析，相信大家对于联想应该有了一个相对较为全面的认识。可以说联想确实存在着很多的问题，有些地方也确实该骂，但是有些地方也确实是被外界所误解了。

我们评价一个企业之前应该需要放下先入为主的观念，在公正、公平的先决条件下，利用同一个“标尺”来衡量，不能用在一家你喜欢企业身上是一套标准，用到一家你不喜欢的企业身上就是另一套标准。那样带着有色眼镜来评价任何一家企业都是有失偏颇的。因为存在一些问题，就全面否定，“一棍子打死”也是不可取的。

同样对于联想来说，也不要把外界所有的批评都当作是有人想要害联想，其实大多数的网友，更多的是在“怒其不争”。因为联想的很多问题已经存在了很多年，但却一直没有多大的改变。

所谓打铁还需自身硬，如果联想自身真的做的无可挑剔，舆论也就不会出现这样几乎一边倒的情形。所以，联想再怎么辩解，“技术无国界”，喊出“誓死打赢联想荣誉保卫战”的口号，祭出上百企业家联名力挺等等动作，都显得是那么的苍白无力，甚至对于舆论还造成了适得其反的效果。岂不知，在强大的舆论洪流面前，不管怎样的辩解，都没有通过自身实际行动来回应更为有力。

希望联想经此一役之后，能够总结和反思过往的不足之处，通过实际行动来回应外界的批评，不断加强自身的“硬实力”，真正的肩负起作为中国科技领军企业应有的推动“科技强国”的历史使命。

最后借用电影《七宗罪》当中引用的但丁曾说过的一句话送给联想：“长路漫漫且遥远，一出地狱即光明！”

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