Before Lenovo acquired IBM’s personal computer business in 2005, the company wasn’t all that well known in the US. But in 2013 the Chinese device maker was named the largest PC vendor in the world.
What’s a bit surprising is that Lenovo actually sold more phones and tablets than PCs in the most recent fiscal quarter. Lenovo’s mobile devices still aren’t the company’s most profitable products, but when the world’s biggest PC maker is shipping more mobile devices than traditional computers, it’s a pretty good sign that the industry is changing.
If you’re wondering why you see a lot more people walking around with Lenovo laptops than smartphones, it’s probably because you’re not in China. Right now most of Lenovo’s phone sales are in its home country.
But with more than a billion people living in China, that’s not exactly a bad place to sell phones — and other devices. All told, about 42 percent of China’s world-wide revenue comes from products sold in China.
Lenovo clearly isn’t putting all its eggs into the mobile basket. The company continues to crank out Windows computers including desktops, laptops, ultrabooks, tablets, and hybrids. But at a time when PC sales in general are shrinking and mobile device sales are growing, Lenovo is hardly the only company attempting to play in both markets. Samsung, Acer, Asus, Apple, and many others do the same — it’s just a bit interesting to see a company that’s become so closely associated with personal computers make such a big jump into mobile devices in just a few years.
Well, given that PCs are replaced every 7 years and phones every 2…and that PCs are often shared, but phones are not…of course phones will outsell PCs, many times over. It’s not really a sign of anything.
Just do the math. A family of four may buy only two PCs over a six-year period, but they would buy twelve phones in same timeframe. Not to mention phones also reach geographic areas that PCs do not, and even in developed countries, they are usually more common – old people have a TV and a phone, but not a PC.
Expect more to come right?
I find it interesting that they become the largest computer maker while IBM – who had it before – did not do as well. Then again, China is a really big market to sell in.
It would be nice if one could get a non-Windows operating system pre-installed on a Lenovo laptop. I like eComStation. It is an updated version of IBM’s OS/2 Warp – which IIRC they did have Warp pre-installed on it.
https://www.ecomstation.com
I wonder how many smart phones ship with an Intel CPU.
Not too many right now, they only started pushing them out about a year now… So only a handful of models available and presently they don’t offer LTE but that’s changing next year, along with the update to Merrifield…