At their Australian launch Lenovo tipped water over their new Think Pad X1 and then instantly dropped it on the floor to prove how tough it was. Now the Chinese Company is about to take product demonstrations to a whole new height, by dropping the notebbok from 9 kilometres up in the air in an effort to prove that the device boots in under 10 seconds.
At their Australian launch Lenovo tipped water over their new Think Pad X1 and then instantly dropped it on the floor to prove how tough it was. Now the Chinese Company is about to take product demonstrations to a whole new height, by dropping the notebbok from 9 kilometres up in the air in an effort to prove that the device boots in under 10 seconds.
The only way the computer can “save itself” is by booting up in fewer than the 10 seconds, and then activating a parachute.
“We wanted to tap into a finding around consumer perceptions, and it’s maybe not a profound finding, but people in general are not happy with their boot times on PCs and they think that it takes a long time. We wanted to play off that perception and show a boot up in an unexpected fashion,” said Jeff Meredith, Lenovo’s VP-mature markets. Other ideas discussed included a Lenovo laptop on the tracks in the path of an oncoming train and in the middle of the road in car traffic.
The website, lenovo.com/rapidboot, launches today with online ads beginning next week, and cinema spots in a few weeks, Mr. Meredith said. The campaign will also use mobile and social media marketing built around customers own frustrated boot-up stories.
China-based Lenovo, which bought IBM’s consumer division in 2005, has a lot of work to do in the Australian consumer market which it is tipped to enter this year.
Lenovo’s global market share in the consumer space was 6.7% in the first quarter of this year, according to IDC data. It ranked No. 8 in the U.S. behind leaders Hewlett-Packard (26.5%); Dell (16.7%); Toshiba (15.3%); Apple (11.5%); Acer (9.8%); Asus (5.5%) and Sony (3.3%).
“The dilemma it faces is how do you go from a strong business sector brand with ThinkPad to a big transactional market like the consumer market, with the Lenovo brand,” said IDC analyst David Daoud. “The U.S. consumer market alone was 8.7 million [computers sold] in the first quarter of this year, and with the worldwide market at 44.4 million, that’s 19.6%. Add in Western Europe, another 7.7 million and 17.4%, and that’s a considerable chunk of the worldwide market that’s difficult to neglect.”
