Channel Beat: Meet The New Lenovo

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Lenovo completed the back-end integration of IBM’s server business this week, wrapping up a year of big changes at the Chinese company.

After buying bothIBM’s x86 server businessandGoogle’s Motorola handset division, Lenovo created an enterprise group andunveiled a global health-care division.

Today, Lenovo’s North American business partners drive more than 80 percent of the company’s North America revenue. Lenovo partners hope the x86 server market will boost the company into serious competition with HP and Dell, particularly in the enterprise.

IBM will invest $3 billion over the next four years on Internet of Things, the company said this week.

IBM will develop a portfolio of cloud services and software, and with a partnership with The Weather Company, IBM will deliver weather-related software and services engineered for the enterprise.

Both companies will work on enterprise data services that will cater to the insurance, energy, retail, and logistics industries. The partnership will deliver Watson analytics for weather, cloud, and mobile app developer tools.

If you’re looking to upgrade from an ancient BlackBerry to an iPhone,Apple will now let you trade in non-iOS smartphones for credittoward a new Apple product.

Apple’s trade-in program previously only accepted Apple products, and the new program may be an aggressive effort to get android users to switch over to iPhones. The announcement comes just a little over a week before the April 10 release of Samsung’s new flagship smartphones.

PUBLISHED APRIL 3, 2015