Another day, another day of change at Lenovo. The lights must never be turned out at the firm’s executive headquarters in Morrisville.

The world’s No. 2 PC maker morphs more each 24 hours into a global venture that is shedding reliance on the machines that led to its success with new products, services and devices designed to capitalize on Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing’s view of the “PC-Plus” era. As internal organizations are shuffled and leadership is changed, at the top Chairman Yang also continues to make moves affecting far more that structure.

Which brings us to the news Wednesday that Yang had added another Yang – Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang – as an advisor to Lenovo’s board of directors. The addition of a second executive – a founder of ARM Holdings – in January also shouldn’t be overlooked. So as Lenovo continues to prowl for even more acquisitions (the CFO says the company is always looking), Chairman Yang bolsters his intellectual brain trust.

But to what end?

The Yahoo’s Yang hiring has analysts speculating that Lenovo’s Yang has another initiative on the way and needs the expertise of someone like Yahoo’s Yang to make it a success:

Selling and hosting online content.

By the way, the addition of the ARM exec adds expertise in digital rights management.

Lenovo’s Game Plan

A look at a chart posted with this story and included in Lenovo’s most recently quarterly financials shows where Yahoo’s Yang might fit in as part of its “protect and attack” global strategy:

  • Protect China and mature markets
  • Attack “MIDH” which is an acronym for Mobile Internet/Digital Home with an emphasis on driving “convergence” with “cloud devices, killer apps, best user experience.” A point of emphasis is to “grow share through home/SMB [small-mewium-businesses] and retail channels.”

So is there a Lenovo iTunes equivalent on the way, especially in China where the company’s “protect and attack” strategy has the firm aggressively fighting Apple and Samsung for dominance in all-things Internet from PCs and tablets to smartphones and smart TVs?

“Jerry Yang brings good quality Internet experience to a hardware company which has ambitions to harvest revenues from content,”  Jean-Louis Lafayeedney, an analyst in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg news. 

Vincent Chen, an analyst in nearby Taipei, reinforced that thought.

Bloomberg noted that Chen believes Lenovo “must be considering creation of some service with music, video, or web storage.”

“It is a cloud environment,” Chen said. “Every player is trying to build its own community in the cloud. Internet transaction and ads can be the ultimate goal, for which Jerry should be able to provide valuable suggestions.”

Let’s not forget Lenovo recently made its first acquisition in the software space. Lenovo also has its own “cloud” strategy, builds servers, is partnered with EMC and in China has a supercomputer buisness.

Lafayeedney sees Lenovo developing a “sort of iTunes-type business model,” Bloomberg reported. Or maybe server farms like Amazon?

“The ecosystem mandate is the ultimate aim for a hardware maker like Lenovo, which would leverage hardware to capture content sales,” Lafayeedney explained. “If in China Lenovo can persuade media content providers to bring exclusivity to Lenovo, or indeed charge for software, this would be the way.”

The Other Board Addition

Not to be forgotten is the addition of another intellectual heavyweight to Lenovo’s advisors.

Tudor Brown, a founder of ARM Holdings, a microprocessor firm, was named to the board as an independent non-executive director.

ARM Holdings labels itself as “the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property supplier.Our IP enables the development of low power, high performance digital products and as such is at the heart of more than 35% of all consumer devices worldwide.”

Note the “digital products” reference.

So, Mr. Chairman, what are you up to?

“In Jerry Yang and Tudor Brown, Lenovo is bringing a wealth of experience and tremendous vision for the future to our company, and we believe that they will add a great deal to our strategic thinking, long-term direction and, ultimately, our ability to achieve our aspirations in the PC plus era,” Lenovo’s Yang said.

Brown, who holds an MA degree in Electrical Sciences from Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, accepted the Lenovo post in January. Brown served in multiple roles at ARM, including president, chief technical officer, and chief operating officer

[LENOVO ARCHIVE: Check out eight years of Lenovo stories as reported in WRAL Tech Wire.]