According to latest news reports from Hong Kong, Lenovo Group Ltd. has decided to restructure it China business to focus on the customer in order to cope with the evolving personal computer (PC) industry.
The chairman of the company, Yang Yuanqing made statements about this change in a blog post shared on Weibo, the Twitter-like Chinese social media network on 16 May 2017. He stated that Lenovo will now be reorganised into two divisions: the first a consumer-focused division of personal computers and smart devices, and second a business to business (B2B) division for its data services. He stated,
China has the fastest-changing smart devices market. In order to take advantage of the opportunities in China, we take the step to restructure our business here.
He further added that Liu Jun, who previously worked for Lenovo’s mobile business group and led the company’s acquisition of smarphone company Motorola Mobility in 2014 will be reinstated as the president of Lenovo’s China operations and will lead now the consumer division.
According to Fang Dongxing, the founder of market consultancy ChinaLabs, Jun’s return was a welcome change as Lenovo was in need of a familiar leader capable of making changes immediately to refocus the business on China.
Lenovo was overtaken in global PC sales for the first time in four years by Hewlett-Packard, according to research firm IDC. While all PC makers have seen declining global sales in the past five years, HP managed to overtake Lenovo even in the US where the latter saw its first market share decline in eight years.
Lenovo which is the world’s biggest PC maker by shipments alone showed a 67% slide in the its third quarter net profit in February 2017. This fall in profits was revealed in an email that from Mr. Yang to his employees that was leaked. Its PC division which by itself accounts for 70% of the total revenue saw a 2% revenue rise after seven quarters of decline.
