On top of the PC world

A larger ambition

Despite Lenovo's market performance in the PC business, worries abound that the sector's low profit margins will eventually become a burden for Lenovo with the increasing popularity of tablets and smart phones.

In the third quarter, 87.5 million PCs were shipped in the world, down 8.3 percent year-on-year, said Gartner.

Because of the current global economic slowdown and competition from mobile Internet products, PC shipments have been feeling the squeeze.

Some analysts say tablets will outsell PCs by 2016 or possibly earlier.

"Becoming the clear leader in global PC market of course remains one of Lenovo's aspirations, but it only represents one more milestone in our journey as a company. We are setting our sights on delivering long-term profitable growth, while leading the way forward into the PC Plus era," said Yang.

Lenovo launched a new strategy this year called "PC Plus" to focus more on other product lines such as mobile devices and build its cloud-computing offerings that allow users to access data remotely or control different devices via a single computer.

Yang said that Lenovo is looking to expand its tablet and smart phone businesses.

In the third quarter, the sales revenue from Lenovo's Mobile Internet and Digital Home Department, such as tablet PCs and smart phones, totaled $718 million, accounting for 8 percent of the company's total sales revenue between July and September. During the period, Lenovo smart phones held 13 percent of the market share in China, up 11.6 percent year on year and second to Samsung's market share of 15 percent.

The company also plans to sell smart phones in Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam in the near future.

Lenovo will place a greater emphasis next year on increasing profits "rather than grabbing more market share", and aim to lift its pre-tax profit margin by at least 1 percentage point in three years, said Yang.