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Lenovo CEO on Steve Jobs and Apple's Efforts in China

Monday July 5, 2010 7:24 am PDT by Eric Slivka

July 10th grand opening of Shanghai Apple store

The Financial Times offers an interesting piece highlighting the views of Lenovo CEO Liu Chuanzhi on Steve Jobs and Apple's efforts to penetrate the rapidly-growing Chinese market where Lenovo leads in PC sales with 30% of the market. In particular, Liu notes that Lenovo is lucky that Apple "doesn't care about China" or else it could see itself being "in trouble".

Speaking of Apple's chief executive, Lenovo's founder and chairman, told the Financial Times: "We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble."

Evidence is mounting, however, that Apple may be beginning to take the Chinese market more seriously, with the company announcing earlier this year that it plans to open up to 25 Apple retail stores in the country within the next two years. In fact, the company is planning a grand opening this weekend for its first store in Shanghai, the company's second store in the country following the Beijing store opened in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics there.

As Silicon Alley Insider points out as well, Apple executives noted during the company's most recent earnings conference call that revenue from "greater China" including Hong Kong and Taiwan totaled $1.3 billion for the first six months of fiscal year 2010, up over 200% year-over-year.
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czachorski
25 months ago
All these accusations that Jobs manages out of his temper, jealously and spite I find to be ridiculous.
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davebarnes
25 months ago
The FT article appeared to be 1/2 an article. That is, it seemed weirdly incomplete.
Not up to FT standards at all. More like an article in my local newspaper.
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sbrownla
25 months ago

All these accusations that Jobs manages out of his temper, jealously and spite I find to be ridiculous.


What? What are you trying to say?

Anyway, he definitely cares about China. A massive untapped market where Apple can pay suppliers dirt cheap amounts to pollute their surroundings, NIMBY style?

I just don't think the consumer market is worth a massive investment because people in general can't really afford Apple prices there, can't here either while we're at it, and those who can aren't really such a giant market segment that there's any reason to rush. Maybe I'm missing something.
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sjo
25 months ago
Opening stores won't take them very far. You have to understand the Chinese customer to succeed in China, starting from the product design. Understanding other markets than the US has never been Apple's strengths. Many US companies don't even think they need to know the local customers. I think that's what the Lenovo CEO was referring to.
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mBox
25 months ago
Hmmm yes they will get the most recent updated computers...Im being sarcastic of course :P
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cohibadad
25 months ago
When Apple starts making products faster than they can sell them they will work harder at understanding untapped markets.
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aarond12
25 months ago
Go ahead, Lenovo, and say dismissive statements about Apple. Nintendo did the same thing several months ago, quickly followed up by another statement that Apple is their new competition.

Lenovo needs to concentrate on what they're doing well in China and Asia: Business sales. They don't need to be competing with Apple at this point. Like in the US, many businesses aren't ready to move to Apple computers (for reasons mostly of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt [FUD]).

Remember that Lenovo is a relatively young company -- they were formed by purchasing IBM's personal computer business. They've only been around for ~10 years.

-Aaron-
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franswa za
25 months ago
i personally believe that apple and certainly steve jobs ARE even as we speak busy with an iphone4 for the very large asian market (esp china, japan) which, when penetrated, will make the US market seem very small........ watch out lenovo et al! steve job's alleged short temper or not........

(maybe the hiring extra rf/antenna engineers is part of this strategy)

the only limiting factor would be the fairly hefty price that an iphone4 would carry in those markets, although there certainly are many affluent people out there

apple should quickly? sort out the current antenna hardware problem, however
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zxcvb
25 months ago

What? What are you trying to say?

Anyway, he definitely cares about China. A massive untapped market where Apple can pay suppliers dirt cheap amounts to pollute their surroundings, NIMBY style?

I just don't think the consumer market is worth a massive investment because people in general can't really afford Apple prices there, can't here either while we're at it, and those who can aren't really such a giant market segment that there's any reason to rush. Maybe I'm missing something.


even though the percentage of people who can afford apple there is lower than in the US but the amount of people can afford apple is much more than that in the US. I mean you could see 20 BMW and Bens just walking 10 blocks literally in Shanghai, well, you probably never been there.

I think apple should've done this years ago.
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talkingfuture
25 months ago
That could be dangerous throwing a challenge down to Apple like that. Maybe they will try a little harder now.
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