Former Lenovo Vice President Joins Xiaomi

On January 2, Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi posted on Chinese twitter-like Weibo, “On the first work day of 2020, Chang Cheng will join Xiaomi as the vice president of Xiaomi Group, responsible for smartphone product planning.”

This occurs only two days after Chang Cheng announced his departure from Lenovo on Weibo. He said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end love will return in a different way.”

SEE ALSO: Lenovo Vice President Steps Down Due to Family Reasons

Chang Cheng joined Lenovo in 2000 as the research and development director of the laptop business unit. In 2011, he became the vice president of Lenovo Group and general manager of the mobile end-to-end software platform for Lenovo, turning to the mobile internet business of Lenovo. In December 2014, he became the co-founder of Magic Factory, a subsidiary corporation of Lenovo Group. In June 2015, he became CEO of ZUK Mobile, a smartphone subsidiary of Lenovo.

Chang Cheng’s resignation from Lenovo is actually nothing unexpected. According to a comment from Sohu, “For Chang Cheng, returning to Lenovo and related smartphone business in the past two years is meant to save Lenovo from its predicament. Although the overall sales in 2018 reached millions of units, there were scarcely any impressive moves in 2019.”

“Frequent leadership changes have also hindered Lenovo’s mobile business. Since the ZUK era, there has been no clear strategic goal and all of Lenovo’s mobile smart devices feature chaotic deployment strategy, with constant overlaps in product positioning.”