Lenovo, a leading PC manufacturer and a top-five player in the server market, has recently returned its smartphone group to profitability. After visiting its China HQ, Charles McLellan reports on Lenovo’s future.

This download provides the magazine version of the article as a free PDF for registered TechRepublic and ZDNet members. The online version of this story is available here.

From the story:

How often have you read that the PC is dead or dying? Many times, no doubt. Yet it’s a good bet that the articles in question were typed on a keyboard attached to a traditional desktop or notebook PC, rather than tapped out on a tablet or smartphone, or dictated into a smartwatch or a smart speaker.

Of course, sales of ‘post-PC’ devices have eaten into those of traditional PCs in recent years, but it looks as though there will be a place for devices with a keyboard and mouse, a decent-sized screen and local processing power for a good while yet.

As Lenovo’s chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing told ZDNet in Beijing: “This is still a $200 billion industry — if you try to find another $200 billion industry, it’s not easy.”

Sure enough, Lenovo is big in PCs, which deliver over three-quarters of its revenue, and has recently returned its smartphone group to profitability.

Next in line for the turnaround treatment is the data centre group, which has seen double-digit revenue growth for the past five quarters but has yet to make a profit. So can Lenovo bring together PCs, smartphones and data centre into a comprehensive strategy?

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