John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Lenovo: We’re Going to Wipe the Floor With Microsoft’s Surface

Lenovo doesn’t worry much about Microsoft’s decision to enter the PC hardware market, because Microsoft isn’t a hardware company — not a proven one, anyway.

Asked about Redmond’s forthcoming Surface tablet during Lenovo’s first-fiscal-quarter earnings call this week, CEO Yang Yuanqing said he’s not happy the device is headed to market, but he’s not concerned that it will eat into sales of Lenovo’s own Windows 8 tablets, either.

“To be frank, we’re not that worried about [Surface],” Yuanqing said. “Microsoft is still our strategy partner. … We don’t like Microsoft providing hardware … But Microsoft entering the hardware business, for us that just adds one more competitor. We are still confident in our sales.”

And, importantly, that competitor is relatively new to the hardware world, which Lenovo has been in for some time. Microsoft may be a tech behemoth, but it’s an upstart in the PC hardware business. And, according to Yuanqing, it doesn’t stand a chance against Lenovo.

“We are providing much better hardware than our competitors, including Microsoft,” he concluded. “They are strong in software. But I don’t believe they can provide the best hardware in the world. Lenovo can.”

Yuanqing’s response to Surface differs markedly from those of other PC manufacturers, like Acer, who have openly criticized Microsoft’s move into hardware. It’s still full of bluster, but it shows that Lenovo is rising to the challenge put forth here, and taking to heart Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s appeal to use Surface as a “design point” to drive further advancements among Windows 8 devices.

(Image courtesy of Imgur)

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald