Lenovo's Smarter AI for All: Enhancing How the World Works, Creates, and Connects

In a crowded marketplace vying for dominance, Lenovo has issued a clear challenge to become the architects of the device future. Six Five Media is at Mobile World Congress 2025 with hosts Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman, where we had the pleasure of sitting with Luca Rossi, EVP of Lenovo Group, President of Intelligent Devices Group. They discussed Lenovo's remarkable success in the PC market, the transformative potential of AI, and the company's vision for the future of devices. ‍

‍

Key takeaways include:

‍

🔹Transformation Beyond the Smartphone: The PC industry is on the cusp of a major transformation, similar to the shift from feature phones to smartphones. AI is poised to revolutionize how we interact with devices, moving from an app-based model to an intent-based model.

‍

🔹Lenovo's Winning Formula: Lenovo's consistent market share gains are driven by a combination of innovation, operational excellence, and a unique global-local business model.

‍

🔹AI-Infused Experiences: Lenovo is investing heavily in AI, integrating AI capabilities into its devices and software offerings, including the Yoga Pro 9i and the Smart Connect platform.

‍

🔹Beyond the Hype: Hear about Lenovo’s strategic differentiation in the AI PC market, including its unique position with the widest range of hybrid AI capabilities across devices, software, and services. Learn more at Lenovo. Watch the video above, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you never miss an episode.

Patrick Moorhead:
The Six Five is On The Road here in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2025. It's been a great show so far. A lot of conversation. There seems to be some optimism out there. Optimism with carriers, optimism with even technology that goes into enterprises from companies who normally service the service providers. Pretty good.

Daniel Newman:
Yeah, absolutely, Pat. And of course, this show has seen a major revolution over the past several years. We've seen sort of a tougher market space for the telco service providers, a lot of enthusiasm for the enterprises. You've seen the show turn into a bit of a mobile edge show, devices show, you've seen vehicles and cars, tons of startups here, but I mean, the halls are packed. You're seeing more smiling faces, kind of hearing from the CEOs and leaders of businesses. We're talking to a sense of optimism and of course fueled by what's expected to be an AI boom.

Luca Rossi:
Yes.

Patrick Moorhead:
And AI is everywhere, Right. It's on the edge in the hyperscaler, on the industrial edge, in PCs in particular. We have seen a tremendous amount of action. We've seen new players come in, we've seen share shifts between folks. It's very exciting and it's my pleasure to introduce Luca from Lenovo, who happens to have the number one market share on the planet. Hey, welcome to the Six Five.

Luca Rossi:
Thank you.

Patrick Moorhead:
I'm glad we could have you. We've talked about this a few times, so thank you.

Luca Rossi:
And I'm smiling too.

Patrick Moorhead:
Yes.

Daniel Newman:
He's optimistic after that last quarter that we got the readout on. If I was Luca, I'd be smiling a little bit too. But Luca, you know, we've had a number of other Lenovo leaders on the show. We've wanted to have you for a long time. We're really excited to get you here with us. You know, you did really have a remarkable quarter. It looks like shares are being won by Lenovo. I want to get Luca as a prominent figure in the devices space. I want to get that sort of perspective on what is going on across devices, how you see it and how you're, how you're driving these wins to Lenovo.

Luca Rossi:
So first of all, thanks for having me after we have been discussing this for a long time. So looking at the market, I'm smiling too. And I'll be honest, I've been in this industry for a long time. Yet, I probably have never been so excited about what we have ahead of us for the PC industry and not only the PC industry. So we are in a transformational moment for the industry and I often make this comparison that we are in a place that reminds me of when feature phones became smartphones and everything has changed since then. So it's about PCs, it's about phones, it's about tablets, it's about other IoT devices. In fact, I'm now starting to talk for Lenovo about body to the cloud. So it's not just pocket to the cloud with the phone, but even with IoT devices that will be AI powered.

Patrick Moorhead:
Right.

Luca Rossi:
The industry is in, I would say looking for a 25, 26 of decent growth last year, the year that has just finished was more or less flat. We are looking at mid to high single digit growth in 2025 and 2026. I'm now thinking in a multi-year journey, I think there are many tailwinds for that. You know that we will have Windows 10 end of service by October.

Daniel Newman:
That's right.

Luca Rossi:
There are probably more than 400 million 5Es plus devices out there and of which 250 million just cannot upgrade to Windows 11 by design. And then you have this AI factor that in my view, in our view will energize the category. So all these are tailwinds. And returning to the point of the transition of a major transformation, we often say we are looking into a change of the usage model of those devices from an app based usage model. I want to do something, I need to choose which app I'm going to do what we call an intent based so the device will understand, contextually understand what I want to do, when I want to do it and how I want to do it and will get things ready for me automatically. And this is what we call ultimately we call the vision of digital personal twin which will happen over time. There are still some building blocks that are built now. One of them is the so-called large action model. And you will see there are a lot of things that are so exciting coming our way. And now talking about Lenovo, definitely, you know we had a great quarter but actually I will tell you this is if I'm not wrong, the sixth or seventh consecutive quarter of share gain. Our lead to the number two and the number three in the industry is getting bigger and bigger every quarter. We are doing that, maintaining our legendary industry leading profitability. So it's a fine balance of growth, profitability, expense discipline. So there are many factors in it, if you ask me. One of the important things is that we are driving together so we have innovation at the forefront. We'll talk about innovation later. We have operational excellence and I will also say we have a unique REST type with our global local model. So we run the company globally, but we run the business locally in all the 180 markets in which we operate. So all these things are helping Lenovo to stay at the forefront, to continue to win in the market and hopefully continue to make our customers happy, which is very important.

Patrick Moorhead:
Gosh, there was so much, so many things. No, no, this was great. I have to tell you, in two or three minutes, I feel like anybody who watches this will have a much better idea. Not just about where you've been and what you've done, but where you're going and why you're going there. I totally appreciate 100% Windows 10 to Windows 11. We are going to see some movement there on the business side, and it's questionable on the AI side. I mean, there's some things that happen that people can't forecast on the plus and the minus side. But this technology being there, I feel like as an industry we will find a way to activate it. And I like this idea of coming in not just from the app side, but leading with what you actually want to do. And that might be a totally different model. And we're seeing some of this on some ideas on the smartphone side as well as the PC side.

Daniel Newman:
I really like the personal digital twin. I've complained to him a lot about how I feel that some of what the AI PC promises kind of falls flat. But I think in just a few sentences you sort of described what I think some of the vendors have, have missed. Luca and I think what they've missed is in the future, what AI can do more than anything else is truly personalize the way we interact with the device, which just at this point, PC to PC, we get lighter, we get thinner, we get more battery life and people buy for that. But in the end, like when it actually wakes up and knows how I want to work and it becomes contextually aware, that's so powerful.

Patrick Moorhead:
It is, it really is. So, great strategic overview. I'm glad that was the first question, but I do want to dive into the products. So we're here at Mobile World Congress. One thing I can always count on Lenovo is bringing the goods. I mean you're always bringing something new to the table that I don't always expect. I mean maybe I've been pre briefed. Okay. But I think it surprises everybody. So what did you bring out here at MWC?

Luca Rossi:
Yeah. So let me comment, maybe I want to comment on your statement of the pros and cons of AI PC, which I think is an interesting topic of which I discuss a lot with customers and inside Lenovo definitely there are more opportunities to explore and I translate what happened into this. In 2024 we have built the tech foundation for what will be the great success of the future of AI devices. We built the tech foundation. But arguably, and I agree with this statement, the software stack is not yet fully there to transform the hardware potential ability into a wow factor that truly delivers value for the user.

Patrick Moorhead:
That's right.

Luca Rossi:
So why I'm excited for the future, I'm convinced that in 2025 and 2026 with large action models with probably more than 100 ISVs that are working on applications that now will start to use this NPUs that we are putting into every device, I'm convinced that this will transform the user experience. So you can think in this way. If you are not convinced today you buy a device that is future proof because you don't want to be disappointed tomorrow when the applications will come and the applications will come. And now we can move to your question.

Patrick Moorhead:
Those are great.

Luca Rossi:
So as I mentioned before, innovation is at the forefront of whatever Lenovo does. Innovation is in product, business model is in many places. But when you talk about products, I think it's our tradition that we bring innovative things particularly here at MWC. I will maybe talk about how we have more than 40 new products here at MWC, 40. And I cannot talk about 40. We don't have enough time. So I will talk about three things that I see compelling. Number one is we are bringing a new device that belongs to the Aura Edition family that we invented together with intel is the Yoga Pro 9i. And this is just another family member of something that we did and Intel did uniquely with Lenovo to reinvent the PC experience with many new features. And you can guess now we are augmenting those Aura things with AI infused experiences. So Aura edition, one of the important things we are bringing here then when you move into the, let me say wild innovation, then you move to the Thinkbook Flip and this is a device with the flippable screen that moves from 13 inch all the way to 18 inch. Over there we used or we reused some of the learnings we have taken with the Thinkbook Rollable. Now the Thinkbook Rollable we showed at CES.

Patrick Moorhead:
That's right.

Luca Rossi:
The line was so long. And now this is going to mass production. We will start to sell it in the next one or two quarters. They're rollable. And this is a proof of concept. This is now in the earlier stage of development, but you can already see it has a lot of potential and there will be interesting use cases. Yet, a proof of concept is not going to sell anytime soon. What else? This baby is a Yoga. And guess what? This has a solar screen cover that means you can charge it with the sun and without the need of being connected to the electricity. So this is also proof of concept. Obviously it's also not gonna sell soon. But it tells you, first of all, it tells you how powerful the innovation engine at Lenovo is. Second, it tells you Lenovo is not only thinking about more performance or thinner devices, but is also seeing how we make this sustainable. The other thing I want to talk about is what I think is the next frontier for Lenovo. We need to get better in software and we are bringing here our Smart Connect platform in the upgraded version 2.0 infused with AI. And that truly brings us forward into what I think is important is the ecosystem play. We have our phone business with Motorola, as you know. We have tablets, we have PCs, we have IoT devices. The vision which now is not any longer a vision, now it's reality. We are bringing all of this under the umbrella of SmartConnect and you will be able to orchestrate all your devices, leverage the AI within all devices into one single software stack.

Patrick Moorhead:
Interesting.

Luca Rossi:
So this is also where we have probably many more things, but maybe you have another question.

Daniel Newman:
I love the surprises, Luca. I also really like some of the not directly product surprises, like the FIFA partnership. I'm a huge soccer fan here. Football as you call it. He doesn't like it, so don't invite him. Just me.

Patrick Moorhead:
It's not true.

Daniel Newman:
Big F1 fans here. We do love the work you do there. It's been great to see how that's created visibility and awareness. And as you've been gaining market share, maybe those types of activations certainly play, play, play a part Play a part. So you started diving into some of these proof of concepts. I want to dig into this a little bit though. Taking big risks, okay, those are resources, R and D investment, that's engineering, that's cost. You got to, you got to build these products. And then some of them work, some of them don't. Sometimes they create a long line at CES and then they never turn into sales. How does Lenovo sort of balance the being out in front and building really cool breakthrough innovation products and at the same time in a tough market with competitive margins, not maybe overreach. And so kind of how do you balance those two things to make sure that you keep your innovation but win the market?

Luca Rossi:
Look, it's a great question and I will tell you that you are not the first one to ask me, hey, are you crazy that you're spending all this money? But I think the answer has several angles that you have to look at. Number one, if you truly want to innovate, you need to have a risk or an appetite for risk. If you don't take any risk, you will never innovate. That's number one. But the other thing is we know when we do products like this, we know they are not going to have a massive volume at the beginning. But we want to hear and see the real customer feedback. And that you can only do by bringing the product to the market, number one. Number two, even though the product has a low volume aspiration and even though it's a failure, sometimes it happens. Then think about how much IP intellectual property and R and D experience we take out of that that enables us the next or the next next device that then becomes a success. And there is a concrete example. A couple of years ago we showed to the world our first foldable PC. At that time it was probably five or even seven years ago. At that time there was no line of sight to produce it at scale with volume and with profit. There was no line of sight. But we invested some, you know, a significant amount of money to do it. And the IP that we derived from that is now in our Motorola foldable phones is now in probably is now in this inch. So there is a lot of learning that you need to build and to build. There is only one way that you build the final product. You learn, you make your mistakes. Another angle that is important is that if you want to build your brand and position your brand at the premium innovation, all these values, then you also have to have a boot product like this. Even if you know that on their own, they probably have not a viable economy. But in the grand scheme of things, that can change and they can help to build your brand reputation. So I think there are good reasons to do it. As you say, you need to balance and you cannot probably do 50 crazy products per year. But you need to carefully select, I would say you need to select what are the foundational technologies. You want to make the bets and go after them. That would be my answer.

Daniel Newman:
I mean, you think the rollable probably came out of some of the work from the foldable and that will be a thing.

Patrick Moorhead:
Well, and I am, I was surprised that the rollable is going into manufacturing because when I was watching it at CES, I'm saying this will never get to market. Right.

Luca Rossi:
It may go to marketing phones as well.

Patrick Moorhead:
Yes. No, it's very exciting. By the way, let's not forget Yoga. You invented basically this category.

Patrick Moorhead:
Yeah, exactly. So great conversation so far. It's been great. I want to talk about differentiation, right? Three big players in the market, say five or six in total, 92% of the market, plus everybody claims they've got a copilot plus PC or an AI PC and a special layer of software. So I want to ask you, how are you differentiating your AI from others?

Luca Rossi:
Look, I think at Lenovo, I always say we have a unique position in the industry. Why do I say that we sell devices from 6 inch or 5 inch to 86 inch. So we have the entire stack from the pocket, as I said, to the cloud. We have experience in Multi OS, we have the Chrome experience, we have the Windows experience, we have the Android experience. Now if you scratch your head and think which other competitor has all the OSS, all the screens, and now we also have the infrastructure offering, we have the services offering. So I think our portfolio of offerings is unique to the industry. So one of the differentiation is how do we leverage this entire portfolio to offer experiences that you can only offer if you have the entire stack. The other consideration that I want to make is that to truly build your personal twin, that must be device agnostic. You don't want to teach three personal twins, one in the phone, one in the tablet and one in the PC. You want to have one personal twin that learns out of every device. So you need to have all the devices. So that is on the business model front, we have all the devices, we have all the OS.

Daniel Newman:
I was going to say, to your credit, you know, there's the fruit company, but I'm saying of the PC, Windows, PC companies. Lenovo is truly differentiated there.

Luca Rossi:
I'm sure about that. Then the other differentiation area where we are investing heavily is software because we now understand we want to offer more than the fantastic Copilot plus PC. But we also have our own AI agent, it's called Lenovo AI Now. Now we have our orchestration layer for the ecosystem called SmartConnect which I spoke about just a few minutes ago. And we are getting ready with more and more software stacks that will be unique to Lenovo and Motorola. And you will only be able to get the benefits if you are part of this ecosystem. So that is where and how we are preparing and wanting to differentiate in the future.

Patrick Moorhead:
That's good.

Luca Rossi:
Plus global local business model, that's also unique.

Patrick Moorhead:
I am glad you brought that up because that is unique. Yeah. Thank you.

Daniel Newman:
Well, yeah, I mean in the end every market is a little bit different and at times I think large companies sort of want to put this global peanut butter in.

Patrick Moorhead:
It's lower cost.

Daniel Newman:
Well, it's lower cost, high efficiency. But when you take the time to build relationships in different markets, you see that everything from the way they use the technology to the expectation of their everyday interaction with their technology providers is very different. I know you're very relationship driven. Just in getting to know you a little bit, I've seen that in you. Luca, I want to just say thank you so much for making the time. We know Mobile World's incredibly busy, so you have the chance to carve out some time with us. Let's do this more often.

Luca Rossi:
Yeah, with great pleasure and thanks for having me today.

Daniel Newman:
Absolutely.

Luca Rossi:
Thank you.

Daniel Newman:
Thank you everybody out there for checking in with us here. This is the Six Five. We are on the road here in beautiful Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2025. Hit subscribe. Join us for all the coverage here at the event. Be part of our ongoing community. But for this show, for this episode, time to say goodbye. We'll see you all later.