联想为什么花23亿美元收购IBM服务器业务

    在这场斗鸡博弈中，IBM似乎已心生退意。

    总部位于纽约州阿蒙可的IBM希望出售旗下x86低端服务器业务已经有一段时间了。去年初，它也曾与最可能的买家联想进行过正儿八经的谈判。总部位于北京的联想（Lenovo）曾于2005年收购了IBM的PC业务。后来，可能达成交易的消息据称被IBM泄露，消息称这块业务的售价将超过40亿美元。但消息可能放早了：这个天价让联想望而却步，转身离去。

    上周四，这两家公司宣布它们最终达成了交易。联想将支付23亿美元，收购IBM这块年收入约46亿美元的业务。约7,500名IBM员工将加入联想。

    消息发布两天前，IBM还在第四季度业绩报告中表示，硬件业务的下滑速度超过预期。IBM决定与联想签署上述协议的时间可能是在这份业绩报告之前，但显然IBM清楚自己持有的这项资产只会逐年缩水。23亿美元的价格固然大大低于IBM一年前的要价，但接受这个价格仍然是明智之举。

    这项交易对于联想及其投资者也有很大意义，交易消息将联想美股的股价推高了3%多。近年来，这家中国公司在PC行业表现出色。约6个月前，它小幅超越惠普(Hewlett-Packard)，跃居行业第一。如今，整个PC市场正在经历空前的滑坡，联想也是全行业唯一一家保持业绩稳健的大型PC公司。这家公司的成功源自多元化（包括产品和地域多元化）策略、规模效应以及超低的利润率。哦，对了，还有完美的执行。

    正如《财富》杂志在去年的一份特写报道中所指，联想的最终目标是依托自己在PC行业的主导地位，挑战苹果(Apple)和三星(Samsung)在移动行业的地位。

    那么，这项交易对于联想的这个目标有何推进呢？首先，它能显著增强联想在低端服务器领域的地位，并能在开发和制造领域能与PC业务产生极大的协同效应。收购IBM这块业务后，联想在企业数据中心服务器行业的排名将从第六升至第三。“我们的业务将据此增长近10倍，”联想高级副总裁彼得•霍腾休斯在一次电话会议上告诉记者们。

    第二，虽然低端服务器是IBM的低利润率业务，但对于联想仍属于高利润率，联想总是将市场占有率置于比利润更重要的地位，以低价与戴尔(Dell)和惠普展开竞争。

    总利润率的提升能给这家中国公司一定的喘息空间，以增加对快速增长的、年轻的移动业务的投资。联想进入智能手机行业是约略两年多前，但依托它在中国和其他发展中市场的业务强势，去年第三季度，联想的智能手机销量已位列全球第三。虽然联想5.1%的全球市场份额仍远落后于苹果的12.1%和三星的32.1%，但这样的表现仍然令人赞叹。

    “我们对于这项收购倍感兴奋，”霍腾休斯说。“这对于我们是符合逻辑的一步。”

    当前的主要问题是这项交易能否获得监管部门的批准，包括可能还需要接受美国国家安全的评估。从以往经验看，这笔交易很有可能获得批准：不同于很多中国公司，联想的运营透明度和开放度很大程度上是执行的西方标准。它已经向美国联邦机构出售了数以万计的PC，并多次获准收购美国公司或美国公司的子公司。其中最值得一提的交易就是联想于2005年收购IBM的PC业务，恰恰就是这项交易开启了一家中国成功企业向全球巨头的转变之旅。霍腾休斯曾代表IBM进行了2005年收购交易的谈判，并于此后加入了联想。他表示，最新的这笔交易预计将在6-9个月内完成。（财富中文网）

    In this game of chicken, it looks like IBM blinked.

    The Armonk, N.Y.-based technology company (IBM) has wanted to unload its low-end, x86 server business for some time. Early last year, it conducted serious negotiations with the most likely buyer, Lenovo, the Beijing-based company that purchased its personal computer business in 2005. News of an impending deal, presumably leaked by IBM, suggested that the unit would fetchnorth of $4 billion. But it was premature: Lenovo balked at the steep price and walked away.

    On Thursday, the companies announced that they finally had a deal. Lenovo will pay $2.3 billion for IBM's business, which brings in approximately $4.6 billion in revenue annually. Some 7,500 IBM employees will join Lenovo.

    The news comes just two days after IBM said during its fourth-quarter earnings report that its hardware business was declining faster than expected. While the decision to seal the deal with Lenovo likely preceded the report, it's clear that IBM understood that it was holding on to an asset whose value would only decline over time. It wisely took the $2.3 billion, even though it was a much smaller sum than what it had asked a year earlier.

    The deal makes plenty of sense for Lenovo, too, as well as its investors, which sent the company's U.S. shares up by more than 3% on the news. The Chinese company has been killing it in the PC business for years. A little over six months ago, it became No. 1 in the industry, edging out Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). Lenovo is also the only major PC vendor that has managed to hold steady as the PC market experiences its worst declines in history. The company has staked its success on a strategy of diversification (in both product and geography), scale, and wafer-thin margins. Oh, and flawless execution.

    As Fortune explained in a feature story last year, Lenovo's ultimate goal is to leverage its dominant position in PCs to challenge Apple (AAPL) and Samsung in mobile.

    So how does this deal further those ambitions? First, it significantly strengthens Lenovo's position in low-end servers, a business that has a lot of synergies with PCs with regard to development and manufacturing. With IBM's unit, Lenovo will go from No. 6 to No. 3 in the business of selling servers to corporate data centers. "It grows our business by almost a factor of 10," Peter Hortensius, a senior vice president at Lenovo, said in a conference call with reporters.

    What's more, while low-end servers were a low-margin business for IBM, they represent a high-margin business for Lenovo, which has often prioritized market share over profits and undercut rivals like Dell and HP on price.

    A boost in overall profit margins could give the Chinese company the breathing room it needs to invest more heavily in its mobile business, which is still young but growing quickly. In the third quarter, Lenovo, which entered the smartphone market only a little more than two years ago, became the No. 3 seller worldwide, on the strength of its business in China and other developing markets. While Lenovo's 5.1% share of the global market remains far behind Apple's 12.1% share and Samsung's 32.1% share, the performance is impressive.

    "We're very excited by this acquisition," Hortensius said. "It's the logical next step for us."

    The major question now is whether the deal will clear regulatory approval, including a likely national security review. History suggests it will: Unlike many Chinese companies, Lenovo largely operates by Western standards of transparency and openness. It sells tens of thousands of PCs to federal agencies, and it has been cleared to buy American companies or units of American companies on multiple occasions. The most significant of those was Lenovo's 2005 acquisition of IBM's PC business, a deal that began the transformation of a successful Chinese company into a global powerhouse. Hortensius, who helped negotiate that deal on behalf of IBM and then joined Lenovo, said he expects the deal to close in six to nine months.