Meet Lenovo's new CEO

Will you pursue the consumer market with Lenovo-brand products?
We're already very strong in the consumer market in the US -- although we've exited retail -- in one segment: high-performance notebooks. We sell those both through companies like CDW and PC Connection [and] also off of IBM.com. I absolutely see an opportunity to take Lenovo's products and go after the individual.

When you use the word "consumer", people immediately jump to [thinking about] retail stores. I'm not sure that retail stores are the right approach, right now. Consumers, individuals, students, absolutely make a ton of sense. Those are very, very important markets, and... listening to customers, we will work with the channels to sort out the future strategy for consumers and how we might include retail in that.

Can Lenovo use its new scale to offer lower pricing on PCs?
We have put together what we think are the most innovative PCs in the industry. I'm being a little bit brash. But that's what the analysts [and] the press, as well as customers tell us. So we think we're putting together an exceptionally good value, an exceptionally good price, for the product the customers are getting. If you look at our growth, it looks like that's true. We're doing very well in growing the market.

Our target is PCs that improve people's productivity, not commodities. That said, we have a constant effort to get the absolute best price for our customers for that value that we deliver. So, if you look at, for example, when we launched the new S50 small form factor desktop, people were blown away at the price point of that machine compared with others. When we introduced the new X40 -- the ultrathin ThinkPad -- that was one of the things that hit all the press. They were blown away by the price point of that machine for the value you got.

You'll continue to see a lot of focus from us on giving the absolute best price to customers, but for a product that will improve productivity. You will not see us go into the commodity market [the market for inexpensive PCs that offer little differentiation from those of competitors].

So we're not going to see things like $400 desktop PCs from Lenovo?
No. We're not in the commodity PC market.

Another huge issue is competition, particularly from Dell and HP, which will try to pounce on any uncertainty this deal has created for IBM customers. How are you addressing that right now?
We have the IBM sales force, and we've armed that sales force...to go out and talk with customers. IBM has access to customers that is really fantastic, and of course that will be part of what we have in the new Lenovo.

Already, I get -- throughout the day, every time someone has a meeting with a customer on this subject -- feedback. Does the customer understand our strategy? Is the customer being harassed by the other PC companies? What FUD are the other PC companies passing out, and are we properly able to communicate? Does the customer have a real concern that we need to make sure we're properly answering for them?

I reviewed the first 200 of those yesterday at noon and reviewed another -- I forget how many -- last night. We'll now go through a daily cadence. We also have, in each one of our geographies, a war room set up that takes any call whatsoever [to answer questions] where our client teams are not comfortable enough to fully explain to the customer why this is good. We've got a commitment to turn that around within 24 hours.

This is IBM. We're using the IBM machinery to make sure that we're totally committed to customers. IBM will be our partner to do warranty and support.