5 days Ago By David Richards
Chinese PC Company Lenovo Group appears to see more growth coming from enterprise and data centres, than PC and smartphone sales in the future claims the Companies Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing who is confident that the business will hold onto their leadership position in the B2b and consumer PC markets. What’s not known is how much of Lenovo’s PC growth is coming via direct sales Vs sales through the likes of JB Hi Fi or the specialist PC channel. The business is the world’s #1 PC company and aims to have AI-enabled PCs, accounting for about three-quarters of their PC shipments within three years.
Currently Lenovo is on a strategic transformation to diversify its revenue channels, including PC’s smartphones and servers. Yang expects Lenovo’s non-PC revenue, which made up 46% of the total in the latest quarter, to pass 50% “in the very near future.” Lenovo’s global PC market share expanded to 24% in the quarter ended September, and it could have an “even higher share of the AI PC market than the traditional market,” he said in an interview.
Their future growth appears to be server, storage and networking businesses in data centres. Yang claims that AI PCs will make up about 10% of total PC shipments in China this year. In Australia premium AI PCs are already in market with Lenovo and Acer PC’s proving popular.
According to retailers the Intel powered AI models are proving more popular than the Qualcomm Snapdragon models due in part to emulation issues on the Qualcomm platform. Lenovo management believe that the demand for AI machines could swiftly rise to 25% of the mix in 2025 and reach 70%-80% worldwide by 2027 as it shifts from being a premium product to mainstream, he said. Yang is also confident that Lenovo will cement its leadership in the global PC market with its AI investment while quickly establishing an edge in the AI PC market with its product portfolio and technology advantages.
Recently the Companies PR Company has been reluctant to expose tech journalists to their latest models, with local PC journalists at IFA stopped from attending launches of new products with the exception of one Channel Seven broadcast journalist. The business hat competes head on with the likes of Dell and HP is already showing the fruits of its investment in artificial intelligence with both their net profit and revenue for the fiscal second quarter topping market expectations as its intelligent-devices segment, which includes PCs, smartphones and tablets, posted a 17% revenue gain. One of the reasons for their focus on the infrastructure market which comprises server, storage and networking businesses in data centres was the reported 65% jump in sales which the Company expects to deliver profits in the future.
Analysts have said the return of profits could take longer than expected for the segment after several quarters of losses, as Lenovo accepted low-margin projects to win orders from cloud-service providers, prioritizing orders to catch up in the AI server business..
