A photo of Yang Yuanqing, CEO of Lenovo. [Photo by Yang Lei/Xinhua]

Lenovo Group recently launched its new financial year kick-off conference under the theme "Focus on Users" at the Beijing Capital Stadium. During the conference, Lenovo reviewed its overall performance in the past financial year and announced its strategy for the new financial year.

Around three decades ago, Liu Chuanzhi, CEO of Legend Holding founded Lenovo Group with only 200,000 yuan ($32,240). Lenovo became the number one personal computer (PC) maker with the highest sales volume in China two decades ago. Lenovo acquired IBM's PC business a decade ago and completed a merger with Motorola Mobile Business last year.

Today, facing the declining market, Lenovo is sticking to its global perspective, promoting transformation and upgrade, and successfully expanding.

Yang Yuanqing, CEO of Lenovo said at the conference, "Last year was a milestone in the history of Lenovo. Although the market was full of challenges, our performance stayed positive. All Lenovo products achieved record high sales volume."

The sales volume of Lenovo PC's exceeded 60 million in 2014, a growth of eight percent, while the entire market declined three percent. Lenovo has been the world's number one PC maker with the largest sales volume for eight consecutive quarters. The market share in China reached 37 percent, a record high sales volume and higher than the total sales of the following six PC makers together.

Facing the challenge of global competition, Lenovo has established a diversified team. Half of Lenovo's management team are Chinese, and the other half are from all over the world. Lenovo recruited Gianfranco Lanci, an Italian with more than three decades of experience to lead the PC business group in 2012.

Globalization has become the enterprise's culture and the reason why Lenovo has a deeper understanding of each regional market. According to Yang, globalization is one of the key factors in Lenovo's success.

In the past financial year, Lenovo completed the acquisition of IBM's System X server business and Motorola Mobile Business. The global perspective provides strong drive force for the corporation's sustainable and long-term development.

In the new financial year, Lenovo will "focus on users".

"In the era of the Internet plus, the transformation of traditional industries is inevitable. The change is centered on the Internet and based on users," said Yang.

Facing diversified customer demand, Lenovo transforming its management. In the future, Lenovo will implement "small teams" strategies. The management will become more open-minded. The functional departments and professional teams will serve the teams, while the teams directly serve the clients.

Lenovo will better satisfy personalized customer demand through strategic transformation.

The strategy targeting global market and clients contributes to outstanding performance. The sales of Lenovo's tablet computers reached 12 million units in 2014, an increase of 26 percent, and 22 percent higher than the entire market. The global sales volume of Lenovo's smart phones reached 76 million units in 2014, a year to year growth of 50 percent. Lenovo became the third largest smart phone maker in the global market last year.

"Engage users in reality and have real clients" is the meaning of Lenovo's "focus on users" strategy. The company is transforming from product-oriented to client-oriented. Exploring the pattern of "device + services", the company enhances the direct interaction with clients and makes effort to transform the customer relations from merely business relations to emotional relations.

Yang said rebuilding customer relations is a strategy for the company's permanent development.