Lenovo earmarks more than $2 billion for the R&D units of Motorola & IBM's commodity server biz

BENGALURU: Lenovo has earmarked more than $2 billion for the research and development units of the two companies it bought last year -Motorola and IBM's commodity server business, a senior executive said.

“We will spend about $1 billion on our server business in the next three years in R&D for innovation and (to) enter new product categories,“ said Satish Gupta, vice-president ­­ technical strategy, at Lenovo, overseeing global strategy and the technology roadmap for the server business.

“We would be spending at least the same amount on R&D at Motorola,“ he said in an interview with ET. The company, the world's largest PC maker, hopes to replicate the same success with the server and mobile businesses. Gupta said there were challenges in growing the server business.

“In the last two years, System x's (which was IBM's low-endserver unit) market share has been declining because once IBM decided that they were selling the business, they shifted their focus away from it,“ Gupta said.

In order for the unit to grow again, Gupta said Lenovo will leverage its capabilities in different businesses, expand its product portfolio and create new partnerships. The company may also enter the enterprise security market, Gupta said.