Lenovo’s AI Acceleration: From Device Innovation to Global Impact | Six Five On The Road at MWC 2026

MWC Barcelona is buzzing about connectivity, edge compute, AI, and the road to 6G.

Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman sit down with Luca Rossi, EVP of Lenovo Group and President of the Intelligent Devices Group, to discuss how Lenovo is translating AI momentum into tangible enterprise outcomes.

Coming off record stock performance, Lenovo reported a historic milestone of over 25% market share for two consecutive quarters. At the same time, Motorola’s premium mobile growth is accelerating, and the infrastructure business is delivering high double-digit expansion. Taken together, these moves align with Lenovo’s stated “Smarter AI for All” strategy across edge-to-cloud architectures.

Key Takeaways:

🔹 Hybrid AI is the future: Lenovo believes workloads will be intelligently split between on-device and cloud to balance privacy, power, and performance.

🔹 Ambient AI changes the interface: With the introduction of Qira, Lenovo is moving toward intelligence that is always present and capable of acting on a user’s behalf with consent.

🔹 AI-native differentiation matters: As hardware converges, intelligent orchestration across devices becomes the real competitive edge.

🔹 Innovation builds future IP: From foldables to experimental gaming handhelds, Lenovo’s R&D fuels long-term platform advantages.

🔹 Supply chain strategy is a differentiator: Through long-term supplier commitments, Lenovo has secured demand through 2026 and 2027 despite global constraints.

With more than 30 innovations showcased at MWC, including the ruggedized ThinkPad X11, the refreshed Yoga 9i 2-in-1, and the Motorola Razr Fold, Lenovo is positioning AI as the connective layer across its entire portfolio.

Watch the full conversation at sixfivemedia.com or subscribe to our Youtube channel for more Six Five Media coverage from MWC Barcelona 2026.

Disclaimer: Six Five On The Road is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded, and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors, and we ask that you do not treat us as such.

Luca Rossi:
Qira is an ambient AI intelligence meant to be available across all your devices, meant to be able to process your data when you need it, partially in the cloud, partially on device. And that helps to solve the very question on how do I protect my privacy.

Patrick Moorhead: 

The Six Five is On The Road here in Barcelona. It's Mobile World 2026. Daniel, it's been a great show so far, and it's everything you would expect. It's connectivity and it's edge compute.

Daniel Newman: 

Yeah, it's so much of that. And of course, you've got the overarching themes of AI. You've got the story evolving or emerging for 6G. By the way, a dozen years for me in a row, except for one break that I we didn't have a choice exactly that one year so I think it's been in Barcelona now for over a decade to I mean this is this is become the place we had booming energies high that's right first day in lines are packed. It's mobile world.

Patrick Moorhead:

 It is. And one of the key drivers, particularly on the volume side of the edge, are smartphones, tablets, PCs, and edge devices. And the market share leader in those is Lenovo. And we have back for another year, Luca Rossi, who runs the Intelligent Device Group from Lenovo. Luca, great to see you.

Luca Rossi: Great to see you and thanks for having me.

Patrick Moorhead: Yes. Your smile goes all the way from Las Vegas where we saw you last at CES on stage with all of those people. But it's great to see you.

Daniel Newman: You know when he smiled is when you talked about him being the leader. He was actually kind of he was just like he was OK. But then you said the leader and you just feel better. Beaming.

Patrick Moorhead: I think he knows what he leads. He does. But he wanted you to say that's the beauty of it.

Daniel Newman: 

So. So you just finished a quarter recently. Growth market share. You know you got all kinds of launches. You got next generation products. What's driving the success here at Lenovo. What's driving enterprise adoption. Give us the kind of high level on what's behind all of this.

Luca Rossi: 

So first of all, let me say that, yes, we feel very happy about our success. I think we are closing one of the years, if not the biggest year, at the record at Lenovo. Last quarter, we delivered more than 25% market share. That is second consecutive quarter. If you take the history, since 1995, no any vendor has achieved this level of market share for two consecutive quarters. So we feel very, very good about that. We are also growing very fast in our mobile phone business with Motorola, the fastest OEM with premium to market. And our infrastructure business is on fire as well with high double digit revenue growth. So things are going very well. AI is everywhere. And our mission of Smart AI for All intends to democratize AI for everyone, from the edge all the way to the cloud.

Patrick Moorhead: 

Yeah, and in Las Vegas, at CES, in this sphere, you personally talked about that. You outlined one of the challenges, which is, hey, this AI is great, but how do I get uniform access across all devices and keep my privacy on device? How does it get orchestrated? And you announced what's called Qira, which is really cool. Can you talk about what are the problems you're solving? Why did you do that?

Luca Rossi: 

Yeah, so I think that requires maybe a little bit of context. Number one, we believe the future is hybrid AI. Hybrid AI means part of the workload will happen in the edge on your device, part of the workload will happen in the cloud. The second part is we believe in ambient AI, which means not an AI that you have to invoke, but rather than AI that is always present and you don't need to invoke it. It just happens to be there when you need it. The other kind of dimension is you want an AI ubiquitous everywhere in your set of devices, from your watch, to your wearable, to your PC, to your tablet, to your phone, potentially to every device that you have at your home. And Lenovo has a unique position, as you know. We have probably the broadest spectrum of products among all OEMs and all my competitors. And with Qira, Qira is a Lenovo and Motorola IP. We are going to start shipping Qira very soon on more than 20 devices in the coming few months. That is just the beginning. Qira is an ambient AI intelligence meant to be available across all your devices, meant to be able to process your data when you need it, partially in the cloud, partially on device. And that helps to solve the very question on how do I protect my privacy? Which workload I want to be running on the devices because I don't want to share with you my bank account. And which workload I need the power of the cloud to have a model running more efficiently and more powerfully on. So Qira is this kind of plan or dream that we are starting, and I am very confident it will revolutionize how AI is intended.

Patrick Moorhead: 

Yeah, I can't wait to get a crack at using it. Yes. So ship it, deliver it, let's go. It will happen soon.

Daniel Newman: 

Yeah, it was fun. I was at an event this morning and your team was there, the Motorola team, showing it off. And I do think that, I think the word I like to use is pervasive. The pervasive presence of intelligence around you. Just work and live. AI kind of becomes just part of everything you do. Instead of kind of having to constantly think about it and evoke it.

Luca Rossi: 

Think about this. AI, you will want your AI to know everything about you or around you. So your wearable will be able to capture certain things, your PC, your phone, your tablet. This will go in one unique place that is very protected and is very private. And this AI with Qira will know everything about you. Obviously, it will act on your behalf with your consent. So that's a little bit the vision we are working on.

Daniel Newman: 

It's good that you point that out, because having that there all the time, I mean, everyone kind of knows that sometimes some of the apps on your phone might hear you. Yes. But knowing kind of active or passive.

Luca Rossi: 

So we are working very aggressively on privacy, security. It has to happen with your consent. It has to be very safe. If we want to make sure our users will trust it, it has, and it will be very safe.

Daniel Newman: 

So Luca, you're announcing a lot of things here, always a big platform, announcing new products, proof of concepts are going on here. Help me cut through some of the noise of a big slate. What are like the two or three big announcements or proof of concept announcements that you made here that you want to share with our audience?

Luca Rossi: 

So obviously you are here, some of the toys that we are showcasing here, some of them are proof of concept. You have a POC of a modular laptop. It's hard because we have more than 30 innovations showcasing here. So, but I will say the ThinkTab X11 is a completely new Android ruggedized device. It's the first in the ThinkPad kind of branding. It offers enterprise-grade Durability for, you know, tough scenarios. I think this will be very well received by the market. Switching completed gears, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1. This is our multi-modal notebook that we have, you know, refreshed with all the new technology. On the Motorola front, we have the Razor Fold. That's also a new debut for us. We are leading in the world with the Flip, and now we are also coming with the Fold. So I think these are just three of the examples we have. As I said, we have 30 new innovations we are showcasing.

Patrick Moorhead: 

So Luca, Lenovo is well known for experimenting with new form factors, new concepts. It's really fun. I mean, the lines I've seen at your booth are proof positive that you're creating energy and some pretty cool stuff. Some of them make it to market, some of them don't. Why do you invest big R&D dollars into some of these when maybe other companies don't?

Luca Rossi: 

Yeah, you know, so at Lenovo, the first thing I will say is innovation is one of the pillars of our success and the foundation of our strategy. So innovation is in our DNA. Now, as you correctly said, not all innovations are making it to be sold in the marketing scale. But every innovation is a building block of building the IP for future success. And we have many proof points. A few years ago, we created the very first foldable kind of laptop idea. We didn't sell too many, but that was the foundation of our foldable Motorola Flip and now Motorola Fold. And today, we are showing our Legion gaming handheld, which is, by the way, foldable. Here you go. It's still not ready for the mass market, but it will come. So, I think for us, innovating, creating IP is not just, you know, for the sake of the exercise, but it creates weapons and ammunitions for later, you know, preparing successful product for the broader market. Makes sense.

Daniel Newman: 

This one looks like fun.

Patrick Moorhead: 

Well, I want to take all the experiments home with me.

Daniel Newman: 

You can. Okay. You can. I'll see.

Patrick Moorhead:

 I heard that, everybody. Okay. We'll see.

Daniel Newman: 

Alright. you know, tell everybody how they go. I know. Luca hooks it up. That's great. Oh, Luca. Maybe one of the tougher, challenging questions right now is that we know, and obviously, Lenovo benefits from data center growth, right? ISG. But you, you know, your world and client and devices is, you know, there's some impact now, right? With all the memory constraints, supply chain impacts, wafer utilization. How are you working, planning, and ensuring the success and the continued growth of your business with all these external factors right now?

Luca Rossi: 

So I will say the industry, the industry is definitely in a moment of unbalance, right? There is more demand than supply. That's a fact. And capacity will not get online before one or two or maybe even three years. There are also worse, you know, worse scenarios made by some of the analysts. What I will say is, at Lenovo, because of our long-term relationship with the manufacturers of memory, with all the industry players, we have secured all our demand for 26, all our demand for 27, so we are not worried about not having the supply, but definitely we are not immune from a significant cost up of memory, of storage memory. All these kind of products are increasing the cost significantly. We are not immune, but at least we are definitely in a very good position of supply. We can safely tell to our customer, we have the supply for you, even though at higher costs.

Daniel Newman: 

So if I could just ask a follow on, what gave you the foresight? I think a lot of people are interested, like you clearly bought ahead. You know, some of the vendors, some of your competitors that did spot price, I mean, they're in a really difficult, like, when did you sort of see this coming?

Luca Rossi: 

No, I would not say we bought ahead. I don't think that is the real answer. The real answer is we have a long term credibility with our suppliers and we always have, you know, multi-year forecasts that are anticipating our growth with all the suppliers. So it's not that we have like one year of inventory somewhere, it's not the case. We have plans, we have forecasts, we have commitments from our side and now from the supplier. And suppliers, they know in the good and the bad times, we will honor our forecast. So they build the capacity for us. Now, will we pay more? We will pay more, but we will not leave our customer without supply. I think that's the difference.

Daniel Newman: 

Well, Luca, I want to thank you so much for spending some time with us here. Thank you. It's always a great event. It's good to hear from you. Congrats on all the progress. Congrats on getting your supply chain nice and tight and being able to grow throughout this entire through this moment. But congratulations overall. And let's do this again soon.

Luca Rossi: 

Thank you so much and thanks for having me again.

Daniel Newman: 

And thank you everybody for being part of this 6.5. We're on the road here at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona. So much going on here, Pat. So much innovation. So much more in front of us. Stick with us for all our coverage here. Be part of our 6.5 community. For this episode, though, we got to go. See you all later.

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