Unfortunately a very small proportion of potential customers are going to hear or care about this... it's about as toxic to their business as stepping in some stinging nettles is toxic to me.
I don't know; if this gets into the news cycle (which it should), I think it will be a huge problem for lenovo. The people buying one of these to run Linux likely already understand the implications and are reading about it now. The rest of the consumer base need only hear "someone can intercept your banking password" and they will take notice.
There has been an uptick in computer security related news stories lately. I think the tide may be changing, albeit slowly.
Unfortunately they have no competition in terms of a quality laptop to run Linux on. None of the competition offers similar features as my current x230 or the x250 I'm probably going to pick up later this year. If you could recommend a replacement that has a good keyboard, trackpoint, 12+ hours of real battery life, i7, etc. I'd be happy to hear about it.
There has been an uptick in computer security related news stories lately. I think the tide may be changing, albeit slowly.