RESEARCH NOTE: Understanding Lenovo’s Server Position

In today’s server market, there is much focus on the big three, Dell, HP and IBM, who collectively hold approximately 70% of the unit shipments (68.4% in Q2 2013 according to IDC). The top two, Dell and HP truly control the market volume with IBM holding a very distant third, having declined over the last few years to just 11% of overall server unit shipments as of Q2 2013. Talk often focuses on Cisco, who is growing quickly particularly in blade servers but off of a very small base, as they are pushing hard to get themselves into the high volume market. Rarely does the name Lenovo come up unless someone is discussing the IT market in China, but Lenovo remains one of the few players who could break out of the “other” category in the market share reports, even surpassing Cisco and Fujitsu (the current #4 and #5). However, to truly grow share, Lenovo needs to put a concerted effort on servers and has more than a few challenges to overcome.

Executive Summary
Lenovo Server SWOT Analysis
GRAPHIC: Lenovo Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
The Elephant in the Room (IBM)
Recommendations
Summary

Companies Referenced:

ARM
Bai Du
Bao Feng
Cisco
Dell
EMC
Extreme Networks
Fujitsu
Hewlett-Packard
Hitachi
IBM
Intel
LANDesk
Lenovo
Mitac
Quanta
Samsung
Tencent

You can download the paper here. .

Patrick Moorhead

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Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.