Bottom line: The presence of the CEOs of Microsoft and Intel at a Lenovo tech fest in Beijing represent the struggles that all 3 former PC giants are facing, and how each is looking to China in a bid to reverse its slide.
Lenovo, Microsoft, Intel CEOs share stage in Beijing
It’s not often that anyone uses the term Wintel anymore, which refers to the duopoly of Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows operating system (OS) and central microprocessing chips from Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) that dominated the computing world for decades. But Wintel was center stage this week in Beijing, in a rare case where the CEOs of both Microsoft and Intel shared the stage with the CEO of Lenovo (HKEx: 992), the world’s largest PC maker, which was holding a bash to launch a wide range of new products.
Lenovo has been steadily hyping this event that finally took place on Thursday, where it unveiled a wide range of new products like a dual-screen smart watch and laser projector smartphone, all of which looked interesting but not too exceptional. I wasn’t planning on writing about the event at all for that reason, until I spotted the photo featuring Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing taking a selfie of himself with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the Lenovo Tech World event in Beijing. Read Full Post…
I have a lot of respect for Tencent (HKEx: 700), China’s largest Internet company and now one of the world’s most valuable web firms based on the meteoric rise in its stock over the last few years. But that said, I’m starting to have some concerns about the company’s future due to its sudden move into many unfamiliar areas, including the latest which reportedly has it looking to buy a cellphone maker. In a somewhat ironic twist, Tencent’s cellular foray would come just a couple of months after Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), the world’s largest Internet company, admitted failure with its own cellphone adventure by selling its Motorola Mobility unit at a major loss.
The final death knell for one of China’s oldest software developers is casting a spotlight on just how difficult it is for companies to break into the global market for computer operating systems (OS). The end for Red Flag Software also bodes poorly for a number of more recent Chinese initiatives to create a mobile OS to rival Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) wildly popular Android and Apple’s (Nasdaq: APPL) own iOS. No specific reasons were given in the reports for Red Flag Software’s final demise, though I suspect defections by the company’s core state-run customers and a broader decline in the traditional desktop PC market were both factors. Read Full Post…
