Lenovo is keeping the Ice Cream Sandwich social rocking with its upcoming IdeaTab S2109. Inside the sleek 8.9mm thick casing is a 9.7-inch 4:3 IPS LCD with a 1.3MP camera sunk into the bezel. Four speakers reside on the backside, which Lenovo claims will help with bass reproduction, therefore capable of producing a richer sound. There’s also a microUSB port, microHDMI, and a microSD card slot for connectivity options. → Read More
Computer manufacturer Lenovo has launched its own Android app store today, called simply, the “Lenovo Enterprise App Shop.” As the name implies, the service is targeting the company’s businesses customers by offering custom management, deployment and publication of mobile applications. Apps can also be purchased through volume pricing.
Lenovo says the app store will work on their Android-based tablets running Android 3.1 or higher, but it will also work with those tablets from other PC makers, too. → Read More
Barring a change of heart or a wild, consumer-driven financial upturn, it looks as if Dell is out of the consumer PC business and is turning its Sauron-like eye towards the enterprise – the one place where people upgrade their PCs at least once a year. According to PCPro, Dell will is “dramatically changing” their entire business with a focus away from “shiny boxes” and more focus on barebones server and fleet hardware.
To be fair, the statement could portend far less than we should expect. Dell has been among the walking dead in PC hardware for most of this decade, producing little of interest (the Adamo was their big consumer play and presumably Alienware will remain a consumer-facing company) but there’s still money to be made in selling commodity hardware for a few percentage points over cost. I doubt the outcry will be as vociferous as it was when HP threatened to pull its consumer business, mostly because Dell has no products of any interest to the enthusiast. The anger at HP was more about their destruction of Palm rather than the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to by a handsome, staid PC in a black/grey case. → Read More
Wow. Netbooks. That’s a blast from the past. It’s like listening to a Maroon 5 song again and going “Wait, is that from that short period when they were ostensibly good or was it from the muddy period after that single about the beauty queen eighteen woman or whatever?” Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Netbooks are the Maroon 5 of electronics: still vaguely recognized but quickly losing value.
Anyway, Lenovo has stopped selling netbooks online, citing good sales traffic for the K1 and A1 tablets. The 11-inch X130e netbook is out of stock and probably won’t be stocked again. PC World notes that netbooks accounted for 6.8 percent of PC sales in fourth quarter last year.
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News of the Lenovo YOGA tablet just broke the other day, and now at ShowStoppers we’ve got the chance to get up close and personal.
It’s pegged as the world’s first multiposition notebook, the its unusual contorting dual-hinge layout makes it a real eye-grabber. The fact that it’s known for running Windows 8 certainly makes it an impressive piece of kit. → Read More
Have you ever wanted to break your laptop in half at the hinge? Lenovo’s Yoga 13 lets you do just that – sort of. This laptop has a large touchscreen that bends over the keyboard allowing you to prop up the laptop like a tent or show the display to another person in front of you. It’s very similar to the old-fashioned convertible laptop except the screen doesn’t quite twist. It runs Windows 8. When the keyboard is face-down it is disabled and an on-screen keyboard appears. Why you would want to do this is beyond the scope of this post but it looks pretty cool. It will be available in the “second half of 2012″ in limited areas. → Read More
Lenovo is serious about ultrabooks. The company just introduced two new ultrabooks that will live alongside the company’s existing model, the ThinkPad X1. These three models put Lenovo in a unique position in the ultrabook game. While other companies are releasing their first ultrabooks, here’s Lenovo, with a relatively large product offering including a high-end model and an attractive entry-level model. → Read More
Lenovo is reportedly working on a quad-core LePad (ThinkPad in other markets) tablet. This comes from a Digitimes report that credits upstream supply chain partners as the source. The news, if it’s true, is somewhat predictable as tablet makers move to dual-core CPU platforms. Lenovo has seen a fair amount of success in the tablet market thanks to its solid ThinkPad Android tablet. The Digitimes reports states that Lenovo has managed to steal a bit of market share from Apple, which is currently around 8.4% in Lenovo’s home market of China. → Read More
Size matters, folks. Especially in the minds of our beloved electronics makers.
Even with the 3.7-inch LePhone and the 7-inch A1 tablet on the market, Lenovo still made plans to fill the 5-inch space. Today those plans have taken shape with a pricing announcement for the 5-inch LePad S2005 Android mini-tab (or giant phone). → Read More
Lenovo, taking a page out of the Android history books, just announced the LePad S2005 tabletphone for the Chinese market. This Gingerbread device pushes the recent trend of supersize phones into tablet territory. But that’s been done before. The Dell Streak rocked a 5-inch screen with pride way back in 2010. However, way back then, the EVO 4G stole most of the limelight, leaving the Dell Streak in the background. The LePad, or as it will be branded elsewhere, the IdeaTad S2005 actually has a chance to make it big in today’s roaring Android marketplace. → Read More
What’s that noise about living in a post-PC era? The personal computer market is actually growing per a new preliminary Gartner report. The research company found third quarter PC shipments as a whole are up 3.2% over the same period in 2010, totaling 91.8 million units. This number is slightly less than Gartner’s earlier projections and the Western European market is partly to blame. But save Acer and Dell, computer manufacturers increased shipments from a year ago and Lenovo, thanks to several acquisitions and partnerships, overtook Dell and now trails just HP in the worldwide PC marketshare pie. → Read More
When I was just a wee pupil, an excellent science fair project didn’t get you much. At best, you walked away with a blue ribbon and the satisfaction of knowing your paper mache volcano was better than your friends’. These days, a great science project can win you much more, like the opportunity to attend a rocket launch in Japan. Way cooler, yes?
Thanks to a partnership between Lenovo and YouTube, students from all over the globe will be able to submit an explanation of their experiments through YouTube for a chance to have those experiments conducted in space. The project is called Space Lab and it officially kicks off today. → Read More
Chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has named Rory P. Read its new president, CEO and board member, effective today. Read joins AMD from PC maker Lenovo, where he worked for five years and most recently served as president and COO.
Thomas Seifert, who served as AMD’s interim CEO since January 2011, will return to his role as SVP, Chief Financial Officer. → Read More
Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet is meant for business types, but it just might be the best Honeycomb tablet available right now. It was announced late last month alongside the consumer-oriented IdeaPad K1 and the Windows version, the P1. Well, Lenovo is finally ready to take your credit card in exchange for a place in the shipping line. The tablet starts out at $499 for the 16GB, WiFi-only model and climbs to $669 for a 64GB flavor — 3G mobile broadband will not be available until October. → Read More
Lenovo is the fastest growing PC maker in the world. The Chinese computer company outgrew every other PC maker for the past seven quarters and is now the third largest PC maker by volume. There’s no questioning Lenovo is a major player in the desktop and notebook fields — and soon tablets, or so says the CEO, Yang Yuanquing.
Lenovo recently announced three tablets, the Honeycomb ThinkTab and IdeaPad K1 along with the Windows-powered IdeaPad P1. The first two just hit the market with the Windows tab coming this fall. With these three tablets, each with a distinct target demographic, Lenovo hopes to surge to the front of the tablet race. Of course that means going head-to-head with the iPad, a product Lenovo’s CEO sees as a top-tier item and whose $500 price puts it out of reach of those in “the small cities, townships, low salary class, low-income class.” Someone should probably tell Yuanquing that his craptastic IdeaPad is only $50 less. → Read More
Lenovo reported results for the first quarter of the fiscal year today, and in a nutshell, things are looking pretty good for the Chinese powerhouse. Quarterly sales soared 15% year-on-year to US$5.9 billion, while net income even ballooned from $54.9 to $108.8 million in the same time frame. → Read More
I like this trend. The Lenovo IdeaPad K1 is the latest non-iPad tablet to find deep discounts as soon as it’s announced. Similar cuts were made to the TouchPad and other Honeycomb tablets shortly after launch.
This affilate deal comes by way of LogicBuy.com who is offering a clean $100 off the MSRP of the just-announced 64GB Lenovo K1 tablet. That brings the 64GB flavor down to the price of the 32GB model. Both models of course stream Netflix and have all the goodies normally associated with Android 3.x. → Read More
Last week I tuned into a press preview of today’s Lenovo announcement. It was an online presentation so, you know, I went on and did other things while half listening. I was nearly ready to close the tab after listening to 20 minutes of some product manager explaining every little detail about the consumer-oriented IdeaPad K1 Honeycomb tablet. All he really had to say was, “We made a Honeycomb tablet. It’s the same as the rest besides it ships with Netflix. It has 32GB of storage and ships in August for $499.” That’s all I need to report as well.
But then the presentation went to the ThinkPad tablet and I woke right up. This is the Android tablet the niche market has wanted all along. → Read More
The joint venture NEC and Lenovo announced back in January is now reality: the companies today said they have finally set up “NEC Lenovo Japan”, which Lenovo holds a 51% stake in (NEC holds the rest of the shares). The joint venture is limited to the Japanese PC market at this point, but NEC Lenovo instantly gained the bragging rights to call itself the country’s biggest PC maker (about 25% market share). → Read More
We’ve heard many things about Lenovo’s tablet plans, but they’re a bit hard to parse. After all, Lenovo is among the tablet faithful, and their convertible Windows machines have been selling steadily for years. We’ve heard they’ll be bringing a new Android tablet (the Ideapad) to the US, but whether it’s just a revamped LePad, a resurrected U1-type device, or something more interesting, we can’t exactly be sure.
It’s got to be coming soon, though, as Lenovo’s Jaison Patrocinio had one in hand at a recent event in Brazil. Like so many coy directors of product, though, he kept it under wraps except for one quick peek. → Read More
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