Two-thirds of business laptop buyers have never chosen a ThinkPad. That's the challenge aims to address with a controversial design pivot for the iconic laptop line while also embracing artificial intelligence. Tom Butler, the executive director of worldwide commercial portfolio at Lenovo, and Kevin Beck, Lenovo's Senior Story Technologist, sat down with Times of India on the sidelines of Lenovo's Aura Experience to talk about how the company is evolving the ThinkPad experience, capturing untapped market segments without abandoning the brand's core identity, all while weaving AI capabilities into the fabric of the user experience.
ThinkPads are being re-engineered for new-age the youngsters who don’t know what the TrackPoint is
"I've got a third of the market, but two-thirds don't buy ThinkPad. So I want to go attract those two-thirds," Butler, responsible for leading the teams behind ThinkPad and ThinkBook, opens up, outlining the strategy behind the company's dual-track approach to its flagship business laptop line, and explaining why the new ThinkPad X9 deliberately breaks with the brand's 30-year design language.
Butler was quick to point out that the ThinkPad X9 isn't the end of the traditional ThinkPad aesthetic we're familiar with. The X1 continues as the flagship for traditionalists. This stratification targets new customers who might find classic ThinkPad elements like the TrackPoint unfamiliar.
He is aware that while longtime ThinkPad users appreciate distinctive features like the red TrackPoint nub, these same elements can be barriers for new customers. "When we talk about attracting new customers to a ThinkPad brand on the business side, you know there were a lot of them asking, 'I don't know what the TrackPoint is,'" he explained.
If you see the ThinkPad X9, you'd find that it doesn't really look like a ThinkPad. Butler and Lenovo are quite well aware of this, and he explains that they "wanted to create a new design, a little bit of a departure from traditional ThinkPad," that should sit well with changing user expectations, particularly among younger workers who come from touchpad-centric experiences. However, Butler emphasized that newcomers would still benefit from ThinkPad's renowned keyboard quality.
Beck adds to Butler's point and admits the emotional attachment to iconic ThinkPad features like the TrackPoint while explaining the strategic pivot: "Am I going to miss it personally? Yes. I've also been using a TrackPoint essentially every day for the last 27 and a half years." However, he clarifies that removing it wasn't arbitrary: "It being there is not an impediment to doing anything else, except that it does take up space."
The decision, per both of them, was guided by Lenovo's broader goal of "extending the addressability of the market and appeal of the ThinkPad brand... extending that to a set of users that we weren't reaching," Beck notes. "One of the key requirements for that set of users was a larger touchpad.”
The pandemic has also influenced Lenovo's design priorities, particularly for business laptops. "Prior to the pandemic, camera check was 'one doesn't have one.' Now, all of a sudden, camera matters extremely," Butler explained, describing how Lenovo integrated a "communication bar" into its chassis to accommodate better quality cameras and speakers for video conferencing.
This attention to quality extends to materials as well, with Butler noting they "spent a lot of time on the paint" and carbon fiber construction to ensure durability and premium feel. That's something explored in a tour of Lenovo's Yamato Lab at Yokohama, where ThinkPads are being designed.
The ThinkPads now have an aura of their own
This design evolution comes as Lenovo simultaneously pushes forward with its new Aura Edition lineup, which spans both consumer Yoga devices and business-focused ThinkPads, including the ThinkPad X9, or as they like to call it, the ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition.
The Aura Edition represents over two and a half years of co-engineering with Intel and is Lenovo's broader push into the AI PC era, which Butler sees as already underway. "We're in an AI PC era. It's already started," he stated, emphasizing that the hardware capabilities are now in place while software continues to advance.
The guiding principle, according to Beck, is that "the whole point is that it shouldn't have to be done... to habitually know and remember to turn something on or off that makes the use of the PC easier." Instead, Aura aims to group features logically so users can configure them once and benefit continuously. "If somebody doesn't want any of it, they never have to touch it again. But everything is designed to get them to exactly what you're talking about," he emphasizes.
Butler described how Lenovo built unique artificially intelligent experiences like AI Now, Smart Share, Smart Care, and Smart Modes on top of base technologies. "Inside Unison is your base platform, but then the tap to share is unique to the Aura Edition experiences," he noted, explaining how Lenovo differentiates its products from other incoming AI PCs using the same underlying technologies.
Beck then goes on to provide specific examples of how AI is being implemented in practical ways on the X9. "On the X9's... a voluntary one-time 15-second recording of your voice... is used to train an on-device CNN, convolutional neural network model that runs actively on the NPU to isolate your voice," Beck explains. This allows the laptop to distinguish the user's voice even in challenging acoustic environments, focusing on them even when others are speaking from the same direction.
He also details advances in human presence detection: "The type of human presence detection that we're using on the X9... time of flight based... low power usage." Unlike previous ultrasonic or LiDAR solutions, this approach conserves battery while maintaining functionality. He adds that "a passively trained machine learning model... to pick up half a face at the edges of its detection capability" effectively widens the detection field, making the system more responsive to users at the periphery of the sensor's range.
Lenovo's approach to AI implementation involves multiple models working in concert. "Llama three is our model underneath AI Now. It currently is the LLM running, but we also have an adjacent model, Phi three running as a safety checker on device," Butler mentions, highlighting the company's focus on reliability, as well as security.
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