Lenovo today at Lenovo Tech World, the company's first global technology event, announced many new products, demonstrated several product concepts that will change the way people interact with technology, and shared insight on the future of the industry from the CEOs of Intel, Microsoft and Baidu. "Lenovo Tech World was a celebration of innovation with some of the world?s great tech leaders, our partners and suppliers, and most important of all, our fans and customers," said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO, Lenovo. "Lenovo has a unique position in our industry because we can deliver the devices, smart connectivity and infrastructure required to create a great user experience and satisfy real user needs. Even more, we talk to our fans everyday about how we can innovate together. They are our partners in defining the future of technology. We will deliver innovation like we showed here today to solve problems and address customer pain points. We will bring together hardware software and services to transform the user experience. This is our vision, and we showed some glimpses of the next wave of Lenovo innovation here today."

In addition to products available this year, Lenovo gave an inside look at three of its upcoming research and technology projects.

Smartwatches are appealing for their convenience, however, their small, wristwatch-sized form factor makes it challenging to display more beyond getting instant updates. Lenovo is approaching this challenge with the Magic View smartwatch concept, aimed at making smartwatches more usable. Magic View is the first smartwatch with two screens. The second screen ? the virtual interactive display - removes the limitations from the physical dimensions of the main screen. It uses optical reflection to create a virtual image and allows users to see a virtual display more than 20 times larger than the watch face display. For example, they can follow a map, view photos or even watch a video. It gives users large enough visuals and immersive experiences, unlike smartwatches of today. Lenovo worked with key technical partners as well as designing its own silicon chip to miniaturize the components.

Beyond wearables, Lenovo explained its solution to making smartphones more usable, more PC-like, by unveiling the Smart Cast concept product. Whereas today smartphones are limited to consuming content, Smart Cast is giving users a smart phone with built-in laser projector, infrared motion detector and high-performance algorithms. This first technology combination opens a new world of interaction: Users can project a large virtual touch screen onto a table to type with a virtual keyboard and work with specific productivity apps (calculator, drawing, note-taking and even edit in Microsoft PowerPoint). Using just the projector alone, users can transform their wall into a movie theatre to watch videos, give a presentation or even play games like Fruit Ninja using hang gestures on the table or cast onto the wall. For a transformative video chat, they can project content onto the wall while viewing different content simultaneously on their smartphone screen.

At Tech World, noted pianist Lang Lang helped demonstrate the possibilities of Smart Cast with a rendition of The Entertainer played on the virtual keyboard with the full size sheet music displayed from the smartphone?s projector.

Lenovo also launched the Lenovo Cast, the company?s first media casting device to bring content from smaller, personal devices to the big screen. It is the company's first streaming media device that allows users the ability to share their content by streaming it wirelessly from their personal screen devices to a big screen TV.

Lenovo Cast works in three steps: plug, link and play. First, plug Lenovo Cast into any large screen device?s HDMI port. Then link Lenovo Cast to the device?s signal. Then play and enjoy media from a DLNA or Miracast-enabled tablet or smartphone. Lenovo Cast offers flexibility with its convenient pocket size and simple set up, making it an ideal companion device for smartphones and tablets. Its dual form factors allow users to hook it up either behind the TV or anywhere near it. The small device ensures seamless streaming thanks to its dual frequency WiFi and its ability to transfer content up to 20 meters, even sending the signal through walls. And it?s not limited to just sharing videos. It mirrors any content users have on their smartphones.

The Lenovo Cast will be available beginning in August worldwide. Pricing is $49 USD.

Lenovo also demonstrated its Smart Shoes concept - one of its Internet of Things (IoT) products that leverages the cloud to tie together hardware, software and applications in a new way. The smart shoes display a person?s mood on its screen as well as track and analyze fitness data including heart beats and caloric consumption and even provide maps and directions to places.

New Products Today

With the backdrop of devices becoming more personal, Motorola Mobility announced that Moto Maker, Motorola?s exclusive online design studio for creating custom smartphones, is now available in China. Starting today, Chinese consumers can log-onto Motomaker.com and create their one-of-a-kind Moto X.

In 2014, Lenovo announced the formation of ShenQi, a separate company that began operating under an Internet-based business model in China in April. At Tech World, ShenQi highlighted several leading devices including new super-slim power banks, 3D printers that can print food, out of chocolate for example, and high-precision objects, the smallest dual-track outdoor sound box and a smart home control center based on WiFi. The company is also exploring emerging fields such as robots and unmanned aerial vehicles.

With the emergence of more specialized devices, Lenovo is also creating tools especially for the needs of business users. Lenovo announced the new ThinkPad 10, which includes the new ThinkPad Pen Pro, giving users accuracy and business-class security for better data protection.

The upgraded tablet enhancements including a new ActivePen, giving users the power to choose their input method with speed and accuracy as well as rapid battery charging and business-class security. Mobile business users struggling to choose between a laptop or tablet will love the new ThinkPad 10 with its flexible working modes.

The tablet features a WUXGA 1920x1200 IPS touch display, optional dTPM encryption, Fingerprint Reader or smart card reader. The handy QuickShot cover automatically launches the camera app with the flip of the corner to help users capture the moment with the 5 MP camera. it also offers 3G/4G LTE support.

The ThinkPad 10 will be available worldwide later this year starting at $549.

Simultaneously to driving hardware advancements, Lenovo and its partners are advancing user-centric software solutions, particularly in the areas of alternate input including voice, touchscreen technology and pen.

WRITEit

Lenovo announced a new software feature that ties together speech and writing technology for a better user experience on the YOGA Tablet 2 8-in Android with AnyPen for Manadarin. Until now, voice input of Chinese names has been a challenging task given there are nearly 7,000 commonly used characters and only 50 without a homonym. A Chinese given name usually consists of one or two characters, which is picked freely from these 7,000 or even more characters. Consider one name: Ying (said with a flat tone). Depending on which character the person picks for her name, it can have several meanings including cherry, hero, eagle, or a singing bird. This poses a particular challenge for voice recognition, and that?s why WRITEit for Mandarin proves helpful. With Lenovo?s WRITEit and Fusion Input technology, users can easily use gestures and context to define and correct the voice recognition results on screen.

Cortana and REACHit

Lenovo announced and demonstrated Cortana and REACHit, a new experience resulting from a collaboration with Microsoft. Cortana is the personal digital assistant available across Windows 10 PCs, tablets and phones that allows users to talk or type naturally to get things done. REACHit extends the search capabilities of Cortana to non-Microsoft services.By creating a REACHit account, users can search Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, and remote PCs and tablets all in one place. This exclusive platform integration gives Cortana a much larger inventory of information to search, opening up an entirely new level of contextual search and giving users a natural way to find their personal digital content.

Cortana and REACHit will be available as a beta when Windows 10 launches later this summer on Lenovo devices. More information can be found at: www.cortanareachit.com and on Lenovo?s Blog. It will be generally available for download in the fall.

Storage for Small and Midsized Businesses

To further Lenovo?s offerings for storage for business customers, Lenovo also announced the new Lenovo Storage S2200 and S3200 storage arrays. These arrays easily integrate into network environments and are loaded with storage innovations at a low entry price point.

These storage arrays offer dual and single controllers in 2U-12 and 24 drive configurations. The S2200 supports up to 96 drives and the S3200 supports up to 192 drives to support storage growth. The S2200 and S3200 support Fibre Channel, iSCSI and SAS, with the S3200 supporting multi-protocol connectivity that can work with Fibre Channel and iSCSI at the same time.

The Lenovo Storage S2200 and S3200 deliver Intelligent Real-Time Tiering, which automatically moves frequently accessed data to higher performing drives every five seconds, increasing storage performance. With hybrid configurations and Intelligent Real-Time Tiering, the Lenovo Storage S3200 can provide near All-Flash-Array (AFA) performance for up to 120,000 IOPS at a fraction of the cost of today?s Flash only systems.

In addition to redundant power, hot-swappable fans and drives, Lenovo built these systems for 99.999 percent availability, multi-pathing, and in-chassis controller upgrades without the need for data migrations or extended downtime.

The Lenovo S2200 and S3200 SAN offerings will be available worldwide starting in June 2015.

Intel RealSense

Natural human expressions like gestures, speech, and facial expressions are increasingly becoming viable input methods, and Intel has been leading significant work in this area with the Intel RealSense cameras and software.

Intel RealSense Cameras come as an optional feature in several Lenovo devices, including laptops and AIO desktops, and help enable new ways to interact, including password free login with Windows Hello using Windows 10, gaming, entertainment, video conferencing and content creation usages. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich joined Yuanqing to demonstrate the next generation Intel RealSense Camera specifically designed for tablets and mobile form factors that brings 3D scanning capabilities at consumer price points as well as other usages like depth-enhanced photo and video, augmented reality and gaming. Krzanich also discussed Intel?s intent to bring Intel RealSense technology to emerging devices like robots, drones, wearables and the Internet of Things.

Artificial Intelligence with Baidu

At Lenovo Tech World, Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, demonstrated how advancements in Deep Learning and Big Data technology could improve the user experience. Baidu?s newest achievement in AI focuses on computers making decisions and giving verbal answers based on their recognition of pictures and understanding of questions.

Robin also demonstrated new features of Baidu Translator. After a user takes a picture of a menu with his/her mobile phone, the app can translate the entire menu into Chinese and display it in full-screen. Another "conversation" feature can help people of different languages to freely communicate.

Li also addressed how AI-based picture and voice recognition technology can be widely applied to people?s lives today. He shared two examples: finding clothes to purchase based on a photo of an outfit someone is wearing to digitally mashing-up user images of tourist destinations in Nepal before the earthquake to digitally reconstruct those hot-spots.