“Lenovo Group Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing said there’s scant room for growth in the tablet market, and that devices running Google Inc. software — including his company’s machines — will keep trailing the iPad,” Douglas MacMillan reports for Bloomberg.
“‘“Tablets will not replace the traditional’ personal computer, Yang said in an interview yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. ‘The traditional PC is changing to adapt to the customer requirements. The tablet is an extra market for some niche customers,'” MacMillan reports. “While Lenovo makes tablets, it’s also an early entrant into the market for so-called ultrabooks, a term coined by Intel Corp. to describe light, thin laptops. A year after tablets dominated much of the talk at CES, computer makers used press briefings and erected elaborate booths to focus show-goers’ attention on the newer category of slim PCs. ‘This will become a trend to replace part of the notebook market,’ Yang said of ultra books.”
MacMillan reports, “Apple’s iPad controls more than 65 percent of the worldwide market for tablets, according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based researcher IDC. Google’s Android tablets, including Lenovo’s IdeaPad A1, represent 32 percent of all tablet sales. ‘Apple is the leader,’ Yang said. ‘For the Android ecosystem, we still need to learn something, we still need to improve something.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s MacBook Air is also winning in the “niche” ultrabook market, which, as with tablets, is yet another market that Apple invented. Creating entirely new markets that spawn myriad slavish copiers, hapless followers, and assorted steamrolled roadkill is something Lenovo has never done and, with current limited-vision leadership, obviously never will.
And, oh-by-the-way, Mr. Yang Yuanqin talks out of his Ying-Yang:
Related articles:
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J.P. Morgan: Apple’s MacBook Air to dominate ultrabook market – December 12, 2011
Why Apple will be the world’s #1 personal computer maker in 2012 – December 5, 2011
Apple on track to overtake HP, become leading global PC vendor – November 21, 2011
Gartner: Apple Mac share up 20% in Europe YOY as PC shipments plunge 11.4% – November 14, 2011
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Yeah sure, that’s one hell of a “niche” market considering they’ve sold well in excess of 50 million iPads now since they were first launched just 21 months ago! This clown has to get the early award for most clueless CEO of the year and we’re only 2 weeks into 2012. Nice job Lenovo!
Yang is wrong! The iPad is becoming the MOST Personal of personal computers. The iPad market will obliterate the need for most desktop computers. Desktop computers will once again become ‘Workstations.’ The MacBook Air market will become the platform of choice for those using a keyboard extensively and require portability. iPhones will also become increasingly useful. Gee, it looks like there is a ‘Mac Market’ and an ‘Also Ran’ market.
Yang said. ‘For the Android ecosystem, we still need to learn something, we still need to improve something.’
But we are clueless on what that Something is! Apple will not show us what to do, and we cannot figure it out. 😛
Exactly!
Actually, Apple does show them what to do, but by the time they see it, in the form of an Apple product readily available, it’s too late. The puck, as they say, has moved on.
Lenovo is winning in the ‘no shit Captain Obvious’ category
I feel that this kind of declarations is more for Mr. Yang Yuanqing’s peace of mind and to try to convince his own staff. He WANTED that the market be like he said. However, he is a minor player in innovation and creativity, including the creativity in declarations.
And more and more I am convinced that the Reality Distortion Field is elsewhere excepts in Steve Jobs life and that he was the only one that really see the present and future and the other computer companies have a distortion of reality.
Or, maybe, my mother was right: Life is like a box full of chocolates. You don´t know which one will you get, except for SJ, he knew which to choose.
Shit Happens®, all the time.
I’ll bet that Google management were not pleased with that quote!
Regarding the sales chart – I would like to see the iPad numbers incorporated from the original release of the device, not just the latest quarter. And why not toss in the Android tablet numbers, too. It wouldn’t make much of a difference.
“Regarding the sales chart”
The chart shows only the top 5 computer manufacturers in the world. The totals of all 5 is only around 65%.
The point of the chart is to show Apple with and without counting the iPad at the end of 2011. The effect is very dramatic.
You would need two separate charts to show the differences over more than one point in time.
The big thing is, the idiots who don’t show Apple numbers with iPad included on the excuse that iPad is a media tablet, are being paid to do it that way.
With Ballmer yelling tablets are PCs at the top of his lungs and his company having the most to lose, I think a lot of Microsoft money has been spread around to make the Windows numbers look good.
Apple is in a niche. There is only one company in the PC Market that is growing and highly profitable. The bulk of the industry is floundering about wondering where they might make profits in the future.
Yang sounds like a gradate of the Ballmer School of Public Speaking.
By ‘niche’ he means, doctors, schools, lawyers, hotels, restaurants, hair salons, airlines, engineers, graphic designers, film makers, parents, senior citizens, healthcare, retail…
Definitely a niche.
I think what really needs to be discussed is that perhaps iPads are just computers and by defining them differently, we are making disparity where there is none (or little). In all honesty, on a daily basis I don’t use my “traditional” computer unless I am editing or doing power-hungry work. Otherwise my iPad and/or iPhone is just about everything I need.
God, I love that graph.
I don’t get these eastern CEOs. Is it a language barrier thing, or do they all talk exclusively out of their asses?
It’s very surprising to see that the CEO of a company like Lenovo has so little understanding of the rapidly growing iPad market. Actually, the iPad market is almost limitless because the potential applications for the iPad are too numerous to count. The iPad isn’t just assisting us in our daily affairs—it is transforming>/i> the way we work and play. And from where I stand, it looks like this transformation is just getting started. No wonder Lenovo can’t compete with Apple! They blindly follow Apple’s lead without the slightest understanding of where Apple is going. The same can be said of all Apple’s would-be competitors. Too bad for them. The train has already pulled out of the station.
Request to MDN:
It would be great if there was a way for contributers to edit their comments. More than half of my previous comment is in italics because of one wrong keystroke, and there’s no way to fix it.
I would like it too, but there’s always the problem of trolls saying “you are a complete loser, and I slept with your mom last night.” changing to “insightful opinion! …last edited by xxx”
I remember back a couple of years ago when everyone was saying Apple was going to fall hard for not offering a netbook for consumers. No company would be able to survive without offering a low-cost netbook that consumers and businessmen could carry around. Apple did nothing and never introduced a netbook. Goodbye, Apple. Apple announced the iPad and the critics said Apple could never sell them in quantity. Who’d buy a $499 tablet when they could buy a $250 Windows netbook. Consumers wanted the iPad and the Windows netbook market tanked. Now the rest of the Wintel PC world is starting to hurt, yet this CEO is calling the tablet market, or should I say iPad market, just a niche market.
Apple is urinating all over these companies and yet they think it’s just ordinary rain from the sky. These people are either blind, arrogant or stupid to be talking about Apple’s “tiny niches and rounding errors”. They need to wake up and start doing something constructive on their own instead of talking trash about Apple.
The ‘markets’ are transforming; and Apple is defining them. There is now an iPad market, an AirBook market, MacBook Pro market (for power users), and an iPhone market; in the ‘Mobile Device Market.’ On the Desktop there is an iMac and Power Mac markets with increasing sales. While for the present Windoze PCs dominate the desktop; sales are decreasing, it will soon join the Android and other mobile OS market as the ‘Also Ran’ market.
The net book idea was from the get-go a stupid idea dreamed up by pasture divots without imagination or gumption. It was not a daring gamble but a wet dream of some misbegotten marketing nimrod. I had the misfortune of acquainting myself with some o’ those things. Atrocities, for sure. Has any of these semi proud tech analysts actually used those things, I mean for real and on a daily basis and not lying outright ’cause of payola.
Its as if back in the 50s & 60s the president of GM would have said “selling families a 2nd car is a niche market”.
You could look at it that way. But you shouldn’t.
Hey, my second car isn’t a GM product. That GM president should have listened to you.
“Google’s Android tablets, including Lenovo’s IdeaPad A1, represent 32 percent of all tablet sales. ”
Bullshit.
absolutely it’s B.S.
but then again the android guys have gotten away with B.S for so long they think if they utter something the press will take it as truth like “ALL android phones should be counted as smartphones ” even if stunningly low web usage, app usage, profitability etc stats show they are not (many are just cheap basic phones).
I remember the PC guys also laughed at the Macbook air as a flop and a ‘NICHE’ . Now years later they are copying it as their sales salvation… LOL.
I have to hand it to Lenovo Group Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing for getting some perceptions right. He also didn’t pull a Samesung move and spew propaganda abuse at us.
But he did mess this up:
Tablets will not replace the traditional’ personal computer
Oops. Already happening! Hello! The iPad has literally wiped out the PC ‘netbook’ market. And good riddance.
The tablet is an extra market for some niche customers
EVERY product has an ‘extra market for some niche users’. That’s a basic marketing concept. Apparently he slept through that class.
‘This will become a trend to replace part of the notebook market,’ Yang said of ultra books.
Oops. Already happening via the MacBook Air. Hello! It runs Windows as well as Mac OS X, was first to market, and remains the ONLY ‘ultra book’ with great specs across the board. What was shown at CES were a pile of wannabe MacBook Airs. Apple set the standard and, exactly as with the iPad, the competition is blunderingly attempting to catch up. PLEASE start listing all the ‘ultra books’ together as one market category as I want to enjoy watching the MacBook Air continue to dominate that ‘niche’ and eat the OtherAirs alive.
Yes indeed Lenovo Group Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing: “We still need to learn something, we still need to improve something.” Or more specifically, you need to LEAD a market for a change using INNOVATION instead of imitating and playing catch up. Is innovation even possible in commie China? 😯
Niche, eh? Let’s compare the profits of the iPad business alone against Lenovo’s *entire* operation.
These comments seem like those of sore losers on the outside looking in. Of course everyone wants in on the tablet business but they’re locked out. They’ve seen what happened to the likes of Xoom, TouchPad, and PlayBook. And on the low-end Kindle Fire gives them no angle to get in whatsoever.
Apple is in a “niche”, the profitable one. The rest are in the commodity one.
“While Lenovo makes tablets, it’s also an early entrant into the market for so-called ultrabooks,…”
The MacBook Air has been sold for 5 years now. That’s early? How?
I am forced to work on Lenovo machines in the school district I support and I will say that anything with that brand name on it is pure junk.
The teachers and administrators hate them and oft times buy their own laptops, most often Macbook pros.