Lenovo eyes major role in server market

Lenovo Group Ltd executives at the release of the company's new server products on Tuesday. Lenovo currently holds around 11 percent of the Chinese server market. [Photo/China Daily]

Lenovo Group Ltd announced the launch of nine new ThinkServer servers on Tuesday and said it plans to be one of the world's top three server providers by the end of 2015, surpassing IBM Corp and Hewlett-Packard Corp.

The Chinese company, which bought IBM's PC division in 2005, became the world's second-largest PC maker last year.

With decreasing margins in the PC sector, traditional industry giants such as HP and Dell Corp are transferring from being pure PC vendors to IT solution providers.

"Lenovo has a market share of around 11 percent in the Chinese server market at the moment. We will invest more in this sector and expand our business into overseas markets such as North America and Japan," said Lenovo China President Chen Xudong.

In its 2011 fiscal year, Lenovo had sales revenue of $29.6 billion, with 37 percent year-on-year growth.

However, Lenovo's server business didn't even merit a mention in the company's latest financial report

Meanwhile, HP said its server business had sales revenue of $5.2 billion, accounting for 17 percent of the company's total.

According to IT research company Gartner Inc, HP led the global server market with a 29.2 percent market share in the first quarter of this year, while IBM took second place with 28.1 percent.

Lenovo's market share currently stands at around 3 percent, but it plans to lift this figure to 11 percent with sales of 1 million servers by the end of 2015, said Gao Wenping, vice-president of Lenovo and general manager of its global server business unit.

"Starting from last year, Lenovo increased its investment in three server research and development centers in China, the United States and Japan," Gao said.

"Connectivity is the most important foundation for cloud computing," said Jesse Fang, vice-president of Intel Corp and managing director of Intel Labs China.

"Servers will be the foundation for the connection of 15 billion devices in the world in the near future."

tuoyannan@chinadaily.com.cn