Lenovo has achieved the world's first on the road it has chosen, but it does not mean that all high-tech expectations must be realized by Lenovo, otherwise it will be ridiculed, which is a crown that has been wrongly worn.
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01
Yang Yuanqing was scolded again
Over the years, we often see some reports, such as China's glass, photovoltaic products, 3C accessories, semiconductor connectors and even daily consumer goods in the world has become the first news in production and sales.
Basically, for this kind of "becoming the world's first" news, the public is happy and popular, and regards it as positive news, because it reflects the overall growth of China's manufacturing industry.
However, it is somewhat ironic that Lenovo has worn the crown of the first place in the global PC since 2013, and has maintained this advantage for nearly 10 years, making China have one more track champion in an important segment of information infrastructure.
What makes the author can't help but want to say two sentences is that recently there was a video of a conversation between Yang Yuanqing and Musk in 2014 that was deeply picked up by readers. When Musk said tesla sold about 30,000 vehicles a year, Yang Yuanqing also said Lenovo's sales — 115 million devices were sold in the fiscal year ended March 31 of that year.
The author believes that more rational people will not think that Yang Yuanqing is comparing PC sales with car sales in a purely numerical comparison, after all, the two are completely different in value and positioning, one is consumer electronics, the other is a bulk durable commodity.
I guess a psychology that Yang Yuanqing wants to share, because this dialogue took place in 2014, which was the year after Lenovo just won the global PC championship (2013 won the championship), for Lenovo, who has worked for many years and finally won the track world championship, explaining its achievements in the open field, even if it is a bit "Versailles", it is understandable, and it is still facing the questions of our own reporters in China. Lenovo and Tesla are completely different enterprises, selling completely different goods, Yang Yuanqing does not despise Tesla, so what is wrong with this?
Tesla is not a perfect company, and there have been many controversies such as "brake doors" before, and they have not yet subsided. But some people focus their firepower on Lenovo, all kinds of sneers, and it is a clip from a video from 7 years ago, and I don't know what psychology it is.
Is it just to prove that Lenovo is "consistently incorrect"?
And people who enthusiastically follow up on this topic cannot but say that they are a little too emotional. The author speculates from the greatest goodwill - in a way, this is because the public's expectations of Lenovo are too high. They may want Lenovo to say it sold 50 million electric cars instead of 50 million PCs, but that's not Lenovo's fault.
In the years when Lenovo was founded, Chinese was still in an era when Chinese could not be processed with computers, a time when we were considered possible to be rejected outside the computer world because our native language was incompatible with Latin scripts. Today's young people may not be aware of it, but it is true.
The efforts of Lenovo technicians made Chinese use their native language on the computer not too long after the invention of the PC (in terms of IBM PC); later, Lenovo began to develop the 286 microcomputer, at that time there was no "intel public version design" This set of play, it is not easy to independently develop the whole machine...
It can be said that Chinese used Chinese computer earlier (of course, this achievement was not independently completed by Lenovo, but the result of the efforts of that generation of Chinese computer science and technology workers), so that the popularity of PCs in China was accelerated, so that China did not fall behind the world for too long to enter the personal computer era, Lenovo did make a great contribution. With this achievement alone, Lenovo should also have a place in the history of Chinese science and technology, and should not become the object of scorn because it has defended the PC track.
More than 30 years have passed, China's high-tech has made breakthroughs in many aspects, there are world breakthroughs in 5G core standards in the field of communications, there are bat, TMDJ and a number of outstanding enterprises in Internet technology and business models, in heavy equipment such as high-speed rail, in the scientific research and exploration of space, Chinese there are too many examples of independent innovation and striving to catch up in high technology.
We are proud of the rise of Chinese technology, but also for the lack of certain key links in China's technology (such as lithography machine), but this is the common responsibility of all enterprises, and it is completely unnecessary to put all this on Lenovo.
02
The crown that was wrongly worn
In fact, for the continuous "eating" public opinion in public opinion in recent days, as an industry observer, the author has long expected.
Although some criticisms have gone beyond the element of rationality and are whipped with a collective unconscious, careful consideration also indirectly reflects the eagerness and urgency of the Chinese people to have a strong technology industry. So you know, most of the commenters are not willing to criticize some very irrational voices.
After all, a series of international supply chain shocks, the embarrassment of chip supply being cut off, and the existence of the entity list are all reminding us that in the high-tech industry chain, our country still has too many lessons to make up.
The public's psychological expectation of the development of high-tech industries is the background of the rise of the nation and should be supported.
However, if we overly amplify the emotions and turn the praise and criticism of individual enterprises into a kind of "political correctness" of speaking online, it is not conducive to the substantial growth of Chinese enterprises, and even degrades the public opinion environment for the survival of enterprises.
Are China's achievements in AI, big data, cloud computing, and chip manufacturing scolded by netizens?
None of them, these companies have come out step by step.
Why Lenovo is in a very special position in this public opinion has a special relationship with the development history of Lenovo.
Founded in 1984, Lenovo began to rise rapidly in the 1990s, because in the early days of reform and opening up, the entire Chinese high-tech manufacturing industry was quite weak. Therefore, as far as the standards of that year are concerned, the rise of Lenovo is definitely a ride, and it is precisely because of such a special historical background that in the past three decades, Lenovo has assumed such a very special role as "the standard-bearer of China's high-tech industry".
If you want to wear a crown and bear its weight, since Lenovo is regarded as such a "flag bearer", it naturally has to face public emotions and questions, and this kind of inquiry is often not aimed at whether Lenovo's main business development is good or not, but whether Lenovo is still a "flag bearer" and whether it is still the forefront of the high-tech field.
In other words, many people put their "expectations" for the rise of high-tech companies on Lenovo, and it is their own expectations that are examined and questioned, rather than Lenovo's specific business itself.
In fact, if you think about it carefully, for us to be such a big country, chip manufacturing, operating systems, industrial software and other basic innovations, must be lenovo this manufacturing enterprise should do, must do?
Each enterprise has its own path of development, but also has corresponding limitations. Lenovo has achieved the world's first in the path it has chosen, even if it is not happy to run, but it has been ridiculed, and behind this logic is actually a kind of impatience psychology, a kind of impatience psychology for our country's high-tech development "overtaking in curves" and "going to the forefront of the world overnight".
But to be honest, this impatience does not have much practical value for our high-tech development.
03
Reflection and catch-up
One of the recent public tortures against Lenovo is that "Lenovo's investment in research and development is not enough."
This depends on how to compare, Lenovo's investment in research and development proportions, proportionally, does not seem to be high, but according to the absolute value is not much.
Moreover, because PC technology is relatively mature, research and development expenses should still be used in more cutting-edge places.
Of course, the author is absolutely in favor of Lenovo should increase the R& D investment ratio, but this needs to have a condition, that is, in line with Lenovo's own positioning of its own development.
Therefore, the author believes that for association, instead of mocking, it is better to spur and encourage more.
Lenovo's past achievements, as mentioned above, in the 90s of the last century, the global computer giant grabbed the beach in China, Lenovo with solid product strength, so that Chinese use their own computers, objectively reduced the cost of computers into the home and office, for the popularity of computers, is credited.
From the perspective of high-tech products going to sea, Lenovo's current global layout, global supply chain, and outstanding performance during the epidemic period show that Lenovo's global layout is not achieved by many companies that have been compared with Lenovo.
In Lenovo's new strategy, we have also seen more new trends, for example, Lenovo has increased the exploration of enterprise-level business and continuously improved the proportion of software and services in revenue; Lenovo has put forward new concepts such as "new IT", "3S" and "end-edge cloud network intelligence", and constantly explores efforts from high-tech manufacturers to comprehensive technology solution providers.
Regardless of whether these plans are going well or not, this at least shows Us Lenovo's attitude, that is, it is not satisfied with simply being a PC hardware manufacturer, but wants to be a real, high-tech solution provider and guide with sufficient technical content.
The speed of this transformation may not be so obvious in the short term from the perspective of the outside world, but with Lenovo's accumulation over the years, its advantages in the enterprise market, and its advantage of being closer to key customers, I believe lenovo will be able to do something.
In this case, dear netizens old iron, please do not worry, do not put on an unbearable crown for Lenovo, give Lenovo more time.