Q&A: Lenovo COO Fran O'Sullivan

IT PRO talked to the chief operating officer of PC maker Lenovo about the company's plans and products, and how she balances the Chinese and American sides of the company.

By by Mary Branscombe, 23 Aug 2007 at 16:33

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Fifteen years after the very first ThinkPad, two years after it bought the IBM PC division and three years before it loses the rights to use the IBM name, Lenovo is doing well. The company announced a twelvefold jump in profits, from $5 million (£2.5 million) a quarter to nearly $67 million (£33.5 million) and regained its positions as the number three PC manufacturer in the world - behind HP and Dell - after falling behind Acer the previous quarter. We caught up with the company's chief operating officer Fran O'Sullivan to talk about what's coming next in notebooks and why the mix of cultures is working so well for the company.

You've launched another tablet PC, the X61 with the dual-touch screen. Are all mainstream notebooks eventually going to turn into tablets or is it still really for vertical users?

I don't think it will ever replace the notebook but the applications where the tablets are working - in vertical or in education - we could not be happier with our tablet results. I was reading on the plane over that one of our corporate partners said 'Lenovo did not create the tablet category but they did perfect it'. We really have worked hard on the getting the best of long battery, thin and light and a clamshell when you need it to be or switching to a tablet when you need it to be. And it's popular; we have been pretty much chasing demand since we announced it.

We've been very successful in verticals, in education. But in general there certain individuals - we have them within Lenovo - who are tablet people. People tend to say either 'we love tablets!' or 'I'll go back to the notebook' but nothing in between. It's black and white, there's no grey.

As handwriting recognition and voice recognition get better, does the tablet become a more normal form factor? Will we all start carrying thin and light UMPCs without keyboards?

I think our heritage with the Think product is based on usability; listening to feedback and thinking how do we provide tools for making your everyday life easier. I run our usability council and really it is not engineering that limits it today, except maybe a little bit where we need to improve batteries more. The real limits are human limits and what you need for very efficient and long input and output. Voice recognition is getting to be very good technology, handwriting recognition is getting better and better. But for voice recognition you have big security issues - as you do with phones. Over here there is nothing more obnoxious than people talking on their mobile phone and you couldn't do any type of voice email without disturbing everyone.

Kids these days use their thumbs, they SMS the person next to them - they really can't write. Long term, handwriting is not the thing. Today the best tool is still a keyboard - and as you get older you need a larger screen or your eyes get tired after a period of time. For the foreseeable future, when doing heavy computing, you're going to have a large form factor device for your input and output needs. Also, we need to make smaller devices easier to use for inputting because of the advantages - email being pushed is very convenient and instant-on is a big thing. Having long battery life is critical; small and light is fun but not if you only have three hours battery life.

What's next for mainstream notebook PCs? What are we going to be seeing in the next Thinkpads?