Lenovo, Threadripper Pro, and the Formula for Incredible Success

The technology market is defined by companies taking huge gambles and executing against near-impossible odds. Dell’s acquisition of EMC and then going private were both thought to be nearly impossible, but Dell succeeded.

Further examples are HP’s acquisition of a failing Compaq to become the then most powerful PC company in the world; IBM’s bet on Watson decades before generative AI became a thing; and now Lenovo blending elements of a relatively small Asian PC company with failing IBM units to form what is arguably becoming the most powerful global technology company and the only one that fully blends Eastern and Western technology concepts into a unique and successful set of products and services.

Another recent company success story involves AMD and Threadripper. Threadripper was initially a consumer product and incredibly risky given its development cost. As a workstation processor, on paper, it blew away everything else. Still, workstations tend to be built for professionals, not everyday consumers, making creating a professional workstation from the technology a very risky proposition.

But Lenovo recognized that engineers buy performance.

While its then much larger peers refused to take the product as an option, Lenovo brought Threadripper workstations to market and almost overnight took high-end leadership in the segment. Threadripper Pro followed, and after last week’s launch, Lenovo’s peers are chasing Lenovo to the technology, while Intel is chasing, not leading, AMD in this high-profile category. Impressive work by both firms.

This week, let’s talk about how Lenovo is taking chances and grabbing market share. Then, we’ll close with a chat about another head-mounted display from Rokid that I’ve been using while traveling that could form the basis for a new class of mobile PC or smartphone experiences.