Will the ThinkPad line ever be sold by Lenovo?

this needs to happen, but who do you see as a potential buyer?

the vast majority of Lenovo's overall business comes in China, but ThinkPads aren't popular there. in places like America, where ThinkPads are popular, they've become increasingly unpopular and untrusted. a whole slew of issues have haunted ThinkPads ever since Lenovo took over.

i believe IBM still has a very minority stake in ThinkPad, but i don't believe they'd ever look to get back into desktops and notebooks, so that's not likely an option.

would you feel comfortable with either Dell or HP taking over the ThinkPad line? what about Panasonic or Toshiba?

 

I highly doubt it'd ever get sold. I'm not 100% sure about IBM's remaining involvement with Think, they changed to Lenovo's support site awhile back (IBM's site was FAR superior in EVERY way). IBM I know were the ones that maintained the old HMM of "legacy" ThinkPads. They got rid of EZServ when Lenovo's support kicked in (I think IBM was contract based to XX date). I doubt Dell or HP would want to buy out Think, they are still promoting their own brand and are ever growing in the corporate/enterprise level. That and recently HP and Dell even considered leaving the PC business, there's just no money anymore selling PCs. IBM would refuse to go back into the PC market, they left it for a reason, there was less and less profit in consumer electronics, and overall IBM had a shifting global business plan.

 

Nope.

I don't think Toshiba can't handle the ThinkPad line at all.

Dell and HP are considered competitors.

Since Panasonic had to get out of the Plasma HDTV market , they probably don't have the money to invest into another niche product line at this time.

 

Prove me that Lenovo is losing on Thinkpad sales and i'll believe you. Otherwise, Thinkpads are staying with Lenovo.

 

This will never happen. Period. There is no reason for them to sell the Think business, which is very important for Lenovo´s strategy (expanding in Servers with the ThinkServers for example, and maybe they will buy IBM´s x86 server unit).

How exactly do you know that? Many businesses in China buy ThinkPads, Lenovo is pretty poular there and also builds the Notebooks for the Chinese Government.

 

government yes, but general consumers there don't buy TP's.

 

Betteridge says no, Lenovo won't sell the Thinkpad line.

Spoiler

Personally, I don't really care what happens to the Thinkpad anymore. The --30 series was the harbinger of what bad design changes were coming with the --40 series, and once my two older Thinkpads die, I'm getting something else if the Thinkpad line continues down the path it's taking, design-wise. You're right about IBM though, and they still provide aftersales support to Thinkpad buyers (at least the X/T/W series).

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by Thinkpads not being trusted here in America. I know that there's the political finger-pointing because Lenovo is (barely) owned by the Chinese government, but if the Chinese really wanted to compromise computers on a vast scale, most of the OEM factories are located in China and I don't see why they couldn't just sneak in spy chips in every OEMs' products.

Toshiba buying the Thinkpad line? Holy crap that would be horrible. And yeah, barely any profit exists in the computer market, so I don't see why anyone would buy any computer OEM's computer lineup, unless maybe Apple's lineups went on sale (doubtful, though).

 

Please state facts that you can can back them up. Otherwise I will not take them seriously.

 

About the whole Lenovo = china = evil thing: From Wikipedia:

 

This, I know alot of people from mainland China who use ThinkPad...they just aren't cheap so not everybody owns one. Taiwan would be the case for Lenovo selling less and less compared to myriad of Taiwanese OEMs (Lenovo has a much smaller foothold, also alot of people in Taiwan don't buy Lenovo cause it's from mainland China).

 

Yep. Computers in China are more expensive than those in the USA (one approximate gauge would be to look at the "original" price of the computers in the US that are normally sold for heavy "discounts"). Then, on top of that, add the fact that this increased price is a much larger chunk of the average Chinese worker's income.

So, most Chinese computer buyers go for the cheapest models; a Thinkpad is far out of their budget.

 

My take on this...

Lenovo will not sell the ThinkPad line anytime soon.

Once they've gotten where (I believe) they want to be - a Wal-Mart of PC industry who drives all the competition out of town by low prices and then pumps them up when left as the only player - they might or might not put the brand up for sale.

By that time, they'll have done to the ThinkPad name what Ford has done to Jaguar's.

My $0.02 only.

 

Of course not, it's one of the most recognizable brands they have, and the current direction seems to apply the sticker on every piece of electronics. Phones are probably next. Thinkpad washing machines? Early 2017

Anyway, Thinkpads as they were: black, modular, no-nonsense, as normal keyboard as it gets in a laptop, TrackPoint first, do not exist anymore anyway. And Lenovo cleared the upgrade path: it's probably easier to upgrade from "old" Thinkpad to any other business-series laptop than ever before: new ones are incompatible with old ones in every minute detail, from keyboard layouts and TrackPoint, to docks, power supplies and display connectors.

P.S. As to Lenovo -> china -> evil (aka has custom firmwares in one or more components, allowing external entities to get control or the data when necessary), the language the CEO speaks, and the corporate culture, do not matter whatsoever. Can Lenovo, or one of the logistics entities between Lenovo and US customer, be "evil", and for certain orders put motherboard or firmware revision of one of the components to 0001/x, and not 0001/y as normal, if national security interests demand it? Sure thing, and how it works has been recently demonstrated very well. Not a concern for a student visiting Facebook from Starbucks. Definitely a valid concern for US State Department.

 

It's funny you make that statement, yet IBM sold it to Lenovo. Businesses exist to make money and survive. If Think was losing Lenovo tens/hundreds of millions of dollars a year, I'm sure they would kill/sell it in a heartbeat, they are no different than any other business. IBM has their own reasons, mostly the PC business in general was not making the money it was in the 90's, and they changed their global business plan.

ThinkPads are NOT as they were. That statement in the eyes of enthusiasts is just plain bollocks. Are ThinkPads still purpose built (to a point) for the business/corporate/enterprise world? Sure. Lenovo for my personal experience has always had top notch drivers and good software, superior build quality/reliabity. But are the same as they were when IBM first ran Think or Lenovo first acquired Think (while still sharing control with Big Blue), heavens no. New ThinkPad no-nonsense? Touchscreens, are no-nonsense? The average business user does not use a touchscreen and probably never will, this is something pioneered from the consumer level. Chicklet keyboards is considered norm now? I better go chuck out all my old ThinkPads then, good heavens. And the X1C keyboard, really? Are we going to make people relearn to type too? Killing the 7 row keyboard, removing ThinkLight, removing Power Manager from Windows 8, just the little accumulation of things that made Think what it is, makes it very un-Think. IBM/Lenovo used to not care about having the latest and greatest, in fact it was more of the opposite, they had old/safe/designs that stood the test of time and that businesses could count on. With Lenovo trying to expand and dilute the brand, and be like Apple I think have hurt them the most. Lenovo/IBM always made sure that Think had a clear and obvious upgrade path, these days new models are being released left and right, some with no dock/expansion, and who knows if Lenovo will make a refreshed version, etc. It's too unpredictable, and that is I think partially driving away big corporations/enterprise away from Lenovo. Perhaps you don't remember a time when Lenovo released models...pretty slowly, and that's what companies want. Companies don't want to see a models being released every 6-12 months.

I personally think everybody has gone overboard about the China thing, but again personal opinion. Will US government and corporations always be skeptical of Lenovo/Chinese brands? Of course they will. From a security standpoint, it's potentially a huge risk, especially with alot of hackers coming from the mainland. They have every right to be concerned, security is no joke in the government. I don't think it is 100% of the reason why the government is using Lenovo less and less, that's mostly with contracts/money issue, but I think it plays a factor. But people have to also remember that individual SMC are made in China too, whose not to say those pieces get shipped to a motherboard maker in Taiwan, and that gets used in Dell/HP or non Lenovo computers.

 

If Think* was costing IBM tens/hundreds of millions/year, with no chance of making a healthy profit, who would have bought it? Building PCs was and is a fine profitable business, just didn't fit into IBM vision. Why be part time stockbroker, part time retail store clerk, if you can be a stockbroker full time?

Now Lenovo is going to be building x86 servers too. IBM News room - 2014-01-23 Lenovo Plans to Acquire IBM . Good news for HP, I suspect.

 

I think servers will be ok... there are no buttons or keyboards to mess with, although Lenovo could be innovative to figure it out... give it a few years

 

I'm saying if for some random reason Think were to nosedive in profit and turn into massive losses, Lenovo would be quick to change it or kill it. Building PCs is not a profitable business, have you seen the consumer market lately? On the cheapest 300-500 dollar computers, literally it's less than 40-50 dollars profit per computer, some as low as 15-20 dollars. It's because they can't have absolute trash hardware, and numbers/specs sell consumer computers (500 GB HDD, 6-8 GB RAM, 720p HD screen). There's only so much OEMs can cut down until they literally make no money, and all the money they get is from the trial software installed. You are right, Big Blue decided to change business plans, but I don't think that's mostly the reason, though I'm no IBM employee so I couldn't tell you.

 

It's still profitable, just not as much as it used to. Machines last longer, replaced later, consumers are using small and underpowered devices elsewhere and they have become the least common denominator for software etc, so OEMs who are mere middleman between retail and ODMs are not getting as fat check as they used to. Lenovo, Samsung etc, who can cut middlemen, are better off than others. Still, it's a profitable business, with devices worth many hundreds of dollars apiece, sold in hundreds of millions every year.

Anyway, going back to Thinkpad brand, it certainly still has some value today, and will, together with black paint, help Lenovo to differentiate their 'a bit better than other stuff we make' offerings from others a bit longer. And then, when it's as valuable as "Ideapad", Thinkpad washing machine will come.

 

So profitable that Dell and HP have seriously considered leaving the PC business, uh huh. If you seem to know more than the giant OEMs, I'll eat my hat.

 

Yet for some reason they didn't, probably to make more losses

Btw. AFAIK Dell and HP are the prime examples of middlemen and final assembly-only in most of their PC business. Unlike Lenovo / Samsung / Asus etc.

 

Most of the budget-models of all the manufacturers are contracted out; Lenovo's no exception there.

The laptop and desktop markets are very low-profit-margin sectors. A few years back, when Macs as a whole were more expensive, Apple sported an industry-leading 20% profit margin on its Mac lineup. Most other manufacturers had profit margins on laptop computers that are in the 5-10% range--and that was a few years back, before consumers started spending even less on laptops.

All in all though, I doubt Lenovo will sell its Thinkpad brand anytime soon. It's a valuable brand name that's well-recognized even by many computer-illiterate folks. In fact, it's lent the Lenovo name overall an impression of quality.

 

Yes. But Thinkpads are apparently different: "Lenovo shifted 60% of the production for its enterprise ThinkPad notebook series from Wistron and other ODMs to LCFC (Hefei) Electronics Technology, its joint venture with Compal Electronics, ... "
Login to DIGITIMES archive & research

Same article hints the reason of the current sudden drastic changes too. "Lenovo has been shifting ThinkPad-related R&D and component procurement from Yamato Lab, Lenovo's Japan-based R&D unit, to Lenovo's R&D unit in Beijing". So what we're now seeing, it's probably only a beginning of "new Thinkpad". 3 rows, beautifully designed, controlled from smartphone, "flat touch" keyboard combined with touchpad is on its way.

 

As MidnightSun pointed out, the PC market is shrinking and profits are at their lowest point. And now Dell can do whatever they want, and they are likely to pull out of the PC market. If 2 giants considered leaving, there is a compelling reason. There's no way the consumer market can compete with huge enterprise/government contracts, I would know.

 

Make them reliable?

 

If you really believe that Jaguars built under Ford's umbrella became reliable I have a nice selection of bridges to offer for sale...

Loss of brand identity and overall marginalization come to mind...followed by the loss of customer base...

 

correct, ordinary Chinese consumers have no shot at TP's.

 

I'm still interested in seeing Lenovo's Think vs Idea sales %.

 

I'd bet that most of us around here share that interest...personally, I'd like to see it split into series...

 

And if Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Apple quit PC market, it would be 5 giants considered... But wait, nobody but IBM has actually quit, and nowadays in one year there are at least 3x more PCs sold worldwide than in, say, 2001. Yes, of course, it's nice to sell in exponentially expanding market forever, but Earth population has limits, and alien civilizations buying PCs are yet to be found

As to Ideapad vs Thinkpad breakdown, why does it matter anymore? Modern Thinkpad = slightly better made Ideapad, at Lenovo's half owned factory, with crazy ideas of the freshly hired Beijing R&D team, targeted towards Chinese market. US, Europe, old Thinkpad, history, who cares. I do, but it's irrational

 

Well...

We know - to a degree - that heads rolled a few years ago, in the aftermath of some poor sales results. We can *presume* that some more ambitious offerings such as W70* series were a part of the perceived failure.

They lost money and switched gears.

What I'm curious about is whether the "new and improved" ThinkPads turn into money-makers (even at Lenovo's ridiculously low profit margines) or become another flop from a sheer financial standpoint.

 

Apple a big market share, huh, that's not the numbers show. Not saying Apple doesn't churn out a profit, cause it does. But market share of Dell and HP, they are still the 2 giants in the US.

You may think modern Think is IdeaPad, but it wasn't a few years ago. Hence why Lenovo's dilution of the Think brand has me shopping elsewhere for a new laptop (and I think Lenovo's BIGGEST mistake), or I'll resort to buying the old models.

 

Dat 24.6% growth, whatever they are doing, they are doing something right. However i still havent seen any Thinkpad (outside of Edge/E) in a retail store.

Still don't see what's so amazing about the old Thinkpads.

 

I'm not sure about Canada, but in the US some ThinkPad models make it into retail stores and college campus stores.

Old ThinkPads are tanks, for business professionals who travel a lot it makes a real difference vs a plastic Acer or Toshiba. That and Lenovo software is pretty top notch, ie Power Manager.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I meant against the new ones.

 

You'll get different answers from people regarding this.

Many will say that the new ones don't feel as solid as the old ones, or as well-built. Or as expensive.

Some will harbour dislike towards particular changes.

But the bottom line would be that a lot of folks feel that ThinkPads have changed and for the worse. There's no denying that fact.

Will Lenovo blink an eye? Of course not.

 

I don't believe it'll ever be sold, unless Lenovo pulls an IBM and wants to change their business model entirely. Lenovo is whole hog into laptops and tablets, and slowly pushing their phones towards more markets.

If anything, I could see them eventually merging the Idea and Think product lines, but I think that would be a ways off -- the ThinkPad name does still carry some marketing value, after all.

 

This I have to agree with 100%. The "newest" ThinkPads in recent memory I have owned were: T410s, X201, X220t. The T410s was first, and it kind of felt fragile. There were definitely build quality issues with the palmrest, mimicking that of the T400s. It felt mostly solid, but not 100%. The palmrest and keyboard felt definitely changed for the worse. X201 was very similar to the X200, but the keyboard/palmrest felt odd unlike the older ThinkPads, which is odd because an X200 is the identical chassis. X220t again another turn for the worse, the clickpad is absolute trash, palmrest/keyboard way worse than what I had used in the T410s and X201.

ThinkPads are changing for the worse, and I'm not 100% sure on the numbers for enterprise/corporate world, but Lenovo definitely is shrinking, and the barrage of new models is not helping, it's making it worse.

 

I think that's because the US government banned them... considering you work for the US government...

 

Again, this statement is false as many government agencies still have/use/surplus ThinkPads. Government and most corporations lease out computers, and go for the lowest price on a contract.

 

i just did a internship for tax return services with the IRS for people under the poverty line, couldn't agree more

 

Here's the story on the ban, or at least the "non-classified" part of it...

Spy agencies 'ban Lenovo from secret networks' - Telegraph

Where, amongst other things, the author states:

To put this in "real-world" terms: Lenovo products COULD be (and likely are) banned at the level where no one could possibly sue the government for not accepting the offer from the lowest bidder. The level where government doesn't have to explain *anything* to its mere mortal subjects, major corporations included.

In the old days, they used to say that no one ever got fired for buying IBM products. Nowadays, one could get fired for buying Lenovo...

The times they are-a-changin'...sang Bob Dylan half a century ago...

 

I can see why this might be a concern for them, but what suppliers are left that can't be "hacked," aren't there a handful of supplier to the main companies that supply same components? what separates hp from lenovo etc

 

How gets the revenue and the (tiny) profit. They're both getting their laptops (both consumer- and business-class) from the same ODMs, which can be either in China or Taiwan. The designs are a bit different though (obvious if you compare a Thinkpad to Elitebook, for example).

 

The fact that HP is not partially owned by Chinese government, if I may put it so bluntly.

Military used to have a lot of ThinkPads back in the IBM days. No more.

Nowadays it's Panasonic. Pretty much top-to-bottom.

Hardly the lowest bidder in the marketplace, either...

 

IIRC, DoD has a completely different policy regarding computers and security.

 

thought so, makes sense, few months ago pc tech was trying to talk me out of buying a newer thinkpad and buy an elitebook because it's sketchy buying a computer from a company that the chinese government has a stake in as he phrased

 

No offense, but that's just plain marketing in its ugliest form, playing on the mark's concerns to sell a product.

 

I wouldn't know. Come to think of it, I don't think I would want to know either.

What I do know is that a number of T4x units made it into Iraq war, and quite a few actually came back.

 

yeah, i thought the guy was crazy since i am only using the computer for school work, ended up buying a thinkpad anyways because i don't really care if the chinese government wants to read my notes from calculus class

 

The only sane approach when purchasing a machine for personal use...