Tantra Analyst

This year’s Lenovo Innovation World was in Berlin, right before the largest European consumer electronics show, IFA 2024. During the event, Lenovo announced scores of Intel Core Ultra 200V (aka Lunar Lake), AMD Ryzen AI300, and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (8 core) based Copilot+ PCs across its  ThinkPad™, ThinkBook™, Yoga™, and IdeaPad™ portfolio. These address all segments (enterprise, consumer, prosumer) and price tiers. With the newly announced and already commercial Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus-based laptops, Lenovo is making Copilot+ PCs mainstream.

Let’s look at what they announced at the event:

Intel Core Ultra 200V laptops:

• Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (15″, 9)

• Lenovo ThinkPad™ X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition

• Lenovo Auto Twist AI PC proof of concept

AMD Ryzen AI300 laptops:

• The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 (14”, 9) – Premium Prosumer

• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 (13” and 15”, 10)

• ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 AMD – Mainstream Enterprise

• ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 and Gen 7+ – Affordable Enterprise

Snapdragon X Plus laptops

• The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x (14”, 9)

• Lenovo IdeaPad 5x 2-in-1 (14”, 9)

Other notable announcements:

• AURA Edition – Exclusive Lenovo and Intel features that include five Smart Modes for better user experience and usability, impressive Smart Share through which pictures on the phone can be instantly seen on the PC with a simple tap, and Smart Care, which gives real-time support from Lenovo technicians

• Lenovo Creator Zone – Gen AI based Image creation powered by on-device AI in collaboration with Midjourney/Stability AI.

• AI PC Fast Start—A service designed to help enterprises easily transition to AI-ready devices, maximizing ROI through AI-powered advisory and simplified deployment.

The event consisted of analyst-only private embargoed briefings and an invite-only public launch for media, partners, and customers. The briefing was very informative, with open communication with the product managers and other executives of Lenovo. It really gave a clear and in-depth understanding of the design philosophy, tradeoffs, market interest, positioning, and other topics, as well as ample hands-on time with the announced devices.

The launch event was a highly polished and produced event, attended by a sizable crowd. The event was kicked off by Emily Ketchen, Global VP & CMO of Intelligent Devices Group & International Markets at Lenovo, and hosted by Luca Rossi, EVP of Lenovo Group and President of Intelligent Devices Group (IDG). The presentation had impressive walk-ons from Pavan Davuluri of Microsoft to Michelle Holthaus of Intel, Jack Huynh of AMD, Kedar Kondap of Qualcomm, Shan Shan Wong of Stability AI, and Stefano Domenicali of Formula1.

The event was a real show of force worthy of Lenovo’s market-leading position, pushing the “Smarter AI for All” theme through its sprawling Copilot+ PC portfolio.

Tantra’s take:

This was my first Lenovo Innovation World, and I came back highly impressed by Lenovo’s ability, strategy, partnerships, and commitment to keep its global PC market leadership. Here are some specific observations and thoughts.

By embracing all the PC SoC vendors in a big way and developing a full range of Copilot+ PCs, Lenovo clearly wants to lead the market from the front. The broad portfolio provides differentiation against competition. Additionally, Lenovo, because of its scale will have lower R&D cost on per unit basis, compared to competition. 

Qualcomm’s entry into the market has shaken the PC market, setting a new, higher bar for performance. It has compelled Intel and AMD to rethink and develop solutions that can provide more than a day’s battery life and advanced AI (NPU) capabilities.

In these PCs, the competition is currently not about Copilot/AI features but more about CPU performance and battery life. The last few months have proven the Snapdragon X-series platform’s performance and confirmed the well-expected app compatibility issues. On the other hand, the benchmarks and initial testing of Intel Core Ultra 200V seem promising, and Lenovo also seems confident of its performance. However, the real test will be when these new laptops are in people’s hands in volume and are used for real workloads.

Check out our reviews of Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge laptops. Both are powered by Snapdragon X Elite.

For now, Lenovo is offering a full range of options using all the SoCs across segments and tiers, letting customers decide. The market will take some time to stabilize and determine what fits where. Ultimately, Lenovo has to position its offerings in a much more focused way so that it doesn’t confuse customers with too many choices and also not overburden its R&D budgets. There will be even more options in the future, with rumored MediaTek’s and possibly Samsung’s entry into the PC SoC market. Adding to this, the transition to Windows 11 will make it a very interesting market to observe.

Apart from SoC considerations, I think the collaborations with Intel for Aura edition products and Stability Ai for Lenovo Creator Zone were also notable for many reasons.

Many AURA features are built on Intel’s Unison app, which enables tighter PC and smartphone integration. Intel made a big splash about Unison a couple of years ago, but there was no news about it till now. AURA features are exclusive to Intel and Lenovo; both companies have invested in this effort. This shows Lenovo’s more profound commitment to Intel, considering that Lenovo could have chosen to collaborate with Microsoft to use “Link to Windows,” which offers similar capabilities. Additionally, that would have enabled such capabilities across Lenovo portfolio. Despite that they chose Intel, hence my comment.  

These laptops got the Copilot+ PC moniker mainly because of their NPU capabilities (over 40 AI TOPS), but currently, there is a dearth of AI features, apps, and use cases. To address this issue, Lenovo has partnered with Stability AI and ported its Midjourney Large Language Model (LLM) into an on-device app. This could be an excellent tool for designers and graphics artists to create images free of cost. Without mainstream “Killer Apps” for AI, I expect such collaborations to increase and expand to other AI model providers. Other PC OEMs might follow Lenovo’s lead and offer similar apps on their devices.

I am also attending Lenovo’s Tech World 2024 and analyst summit in October 2024. There will be even more insights from them. So, be on the lookout for those on this site.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.