Lenovo Acquires Motorola Analysis of the Problem

The "King of Silk King" Lenovo's successful counterattack has finally met the ill-fated "old-fashioned white Fumei" Motorola. It is a good news that according to IDC data, Lenovo and Xiaomi shipped only a few hundred thousand units in the third quarter of 2014. The gap, while Motorola's single-quarter shipments exceeded 8 million units, integrated Motorola's market share, Lenovo became the world's third-largest smart phone manufacturers, students forced Millet may be the "mobile phone help" chair for the shortest time "Three Lords."

But after big weddings, both Lenovo and Motorola, who are “hard” but not “soft”, are they going to pass in the future? This is really a problem. In the headline brother's view, the smart phone market has been developed so far, it has been able to establish four core competition points: supply chain management efficiency; channel operation and marketing; system and software differentiation; and the vertical integration of core hardware technology and components. The combination of Lenovo and Motorola owns or strengthens some core competencies, but some of the most critical core competencies, Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola still cannot be established.

First of all, let's take a look at what competitiveness has increased after Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola, or what areas in which both Lenovo and Motorola can achieve a complementary effect of 1+1>=2?

There is nothing wrong with Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola's strategic thinking. Its intention is very clear: by acquiring a mature brand, it will quickly achieve a large-scale effect, with a high band and low, helping Lenovo to strengthen its dominant market position.

Since the end of last year, Motorola has been seen as far away from the consumer's line of sight and began to show a clear recovery: the introduction of Moto G and Moto E two low-end models and carry native Android system market strategy has been India, Brazil and other multinational markets Welcome, and the flagship product Moto X has been greatly improved in the second generation already has the look of high-end products in the international mobile phone brand. Therefore, Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola is not only a brand's "declined nobility," but a product line. The "ZTE Little Overlord" is a relatively complete and growing shipment.

Second, Motorola has more than 17,000 patents. Although Google retains most of Motorola's patents, Lenovo has acquired all Motorola patent rights through this acquisition. How good is this for Lenovo? The headline brother concluded after research that Lenovo can defend against patent extortion in overseas markets. For example, through Motorola’s patent matrix, in most cases, it can effectively cope with competitors’ use of patent litigation methods to implement commercial strikes or reduce some companies’ “exterrant” patent fees. The possibility. This one, Lenovo may save nearly 10% of the cost in each mature market.

At the same time, Motorola in the United States, mature markets in Europe and emerging markets in India, Brazil and other emerging markets have a relatively complete operator relations and layout, Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola can share these resources, I believe that soon, Lenovo's own mobile phone brand in overseas markets The operator relationship will be no worse than Huawei and ZTE.

In addition, Motorola has more than 2,000 senior R&D personnel located in Chicago, Silicon Valley and Florida in the United States. These R&D personnel have been responsible for the research and development of Motorola’s mobile phones and wearable R&D equipment during the Google acquisition period. Moto X smart phones and Moto 360 smart Watches and other products come from this R&D team. It is understood that this R & D team has a more powerful custom hardware power to adjust the SOC, this headline brother believe that in addition to Huawei's domestic mobile phone manufacturers, other companies can only hehe.

And what can Lenovo do to help Motorola? That is, Lenovo and Motorola will adopt unified management in procurement and supply chain. The supply chain integration capability and the high efficiency of operations have always been the key strength that Lenovo had gained in the past in the PC market. Moreover, the strong combination of Lenovo and Motorola's dual brands can allow Lenovo to increase its bargaining power in the supply chain. Further reduce costs.

Do you understand it? Lenovo is best at providing supply chain integration and cost control, while Motorola has strong capabilities in brand and product lines, patent libraries, market share and operator relations in important international countries, and hardware research and development capabilities. The integration will have strong competitiveness in the aspects of supply chain management efficiency, channel operation and marketing, and hardware research and development. This will be a powerful addition to Lenovo's maturity in the smart phone market because it will be a disruptive innovation bonus. After disappearing and standardizing products, the smart phone market competition will be the integration ability and operational efficiency of the supply chain, that is, who can make more effective cost control.

It can be said that Lenovo’s hidden concern is not the “hard” part. Apart from not having the strong R&D capabilities of Samsung and the vertical integration capabilities of the core component supply chain, Lenovo’s association with Motorola already has basically any relationship with it. The world's top hardware manufacturers have a higher level of strength.

Lenovo's biggest problem lies in the "soft" part, which is the product design capabilities of smart phones and the user experience of system software. Throughout Lenovo’s smartphone line of branded products, whether it is the Music Phone series that has been played down, or the high-end model K series, or the newly launched VIBE series, the industrial design of Lenovo’s products lacks a sense of beauty and stability. The design style, workmanship is not considered to be an excellent standard in the industry, but in terms of user experience in the system and software, Lenovo cannot even compare with native Android experience in the country. It can be said that the mediocre level of product hardware and software design is even poor, so that Lenovo has not been able to truly play in the past accumulated in the PC field.

In the headline brother's opinion, Lenovo can learn to use Moto's powerful hardware R&D capabilities through the acquisition of Motorola to rapidly upgrade its hardware industrial design level and quickly develop products such as Huawei Mate 7, Xiaomi 4, and Meizu MX4 in the mid-range market. It is still possible that products in the high-end market can stand firm. However, in terms of user experience and differentiated competition in systems and software, Headel believes that neither Lenovo itself nor Motorola will have too many competitive advantages. How to enhance “soft” strength will be the biggest challenge for Lenovo in the future.

There is a strong supply chain, but also a very smooth channel, but did not come up with products that make consumers tempted. This is a problem that Lenovo and Motorola must face together.