Lenovo Splits With Time Warner; Partners With
China Telecom
Lenovo Computers has unceremoniously ended its relationship
with Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) by buying
out Time Warner's 49 per cent investment in FM365.com,
Lenovo's portal website. The partnership was announced
in 2000, at the peak of the Internet boom, with AOL Time
Warner supplying applications and backend management tools
to Legend.
Lenovo CFO Mary Ma Xuezheng, in an interview with the
South China Morning Post, admitted that the project was
a failure for Lenovo. "No one knew three years ago
what would have happened in the ever-changing telecommunications
market," she said. She said that the growing popularity
of wireless LANs and ADSL access to the Internet were
behind Lenovo's decision to back away from running a media
business.
Lenovo and China Telecom have also announced plans for
a strategic alliance, focused on business bundling, marketing,
customer services and industry promotions to jointly promote
their products and services.
Computers made by Legend will come pre-installed with
ADSL broadband access to connect to China Telecom's China
Vnet, providing access to a wide range of broadband applications.
Sunny Information Technology Service, Lenovo's service
support arm, will also enter into an agreement with China
Telecom, becoming a customer service agency for its broadband
services.
Most significantly, China Telecom has announced that
it is now a member of the Intelligent Grouping and Resource
Sharing (IGRS) Working Group. IGRS is a Chinese domestically
developed communications standard for electronics devices
which has been strongly supported by the Chinese government's
powerful Ministry of Information and Industry (MII). Over
the past year, MII has pushed IGRS as a standard among
China's leading
manufacturers .
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