Lenovo says it’s harder to turn Moto around than they thought

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing recently talked about the challenges they have had to face with acquiring Motorola and trying to restore the luster of the Moto brand.

His view is that they weren’t well prepared for turning Moto around because they didn’t realize how “tarnished” the brand had become. Those miscues were attributed to Lenovo simply not knowing the company well enough and assuming that they could simply apply the same strategy they used to take on IMB’s ThinkPad lineup.

Indeed, Motorola’s problems are much harder to manage. It’s not necessarily that the brand is dead, but these name stay brands are becoming increasingly less important to consumers as Chinese players are pushing out quality phones with lower price tags, a signal that the industry is starting to value, well, value, above all else.

Despite that, Lenovo doesn’t see the situation as a falling sky one. They’ve had to pretty much destroy the original workforce with job cuts in the thousands, sure, but the company still believes that nurturing the Moto brand back to relevance will be vital in their ability to expand their global presence. Beliefs alone don’t mean much without results, though, so we’ll see if their tune changes if things continue looking bleak.