Lenovo Reports First Revenue Decline in 2.5 Years

Lenovo, the world’s largest maker of PCs, reported a 4 percent revenue decline in the previous quarter, its first revenue shortfall in 10 quarters.

“Lenovo once again delivered solid results, even in a challenging global market,” Lenovo chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang said. “Our non-PC businesses are gaining momentum and now represent more than 37 percent of our revenue.  Both solutions and services business and infrastructure business saw high double-digit revenue growth year on year. Whether our traditional markets are booming or contracting, Lenovo consistently delivers on its commitments and outperforms market expectations.”

Unfortunately, Lenovo’s traditional markets—mostly PCs—are contracting, with PC sales down 16 percent YOY. That’s better than its chief competitors—HP’s PC sales were down 28 percent and Dell’s fell 21 percent, IDC says—but is still yet another indicator that the PC business is in freefall.

Admitting only that “the market size of PC and tablets declined in the short term,” Lenovo maintains that its long-term expectation is that PC sales will remain above pre-pandemic levels. And that its non-PC businesses will continue to grow as “Lenovo expands from smart devices to smart spaces.”

It also provided an interesting—if isolated—bit of hard data for its PC sales: that business, Lenovo said, “maintained [its] industry-leading profitability of 7.4 percent,” buoyed by its focus on premium PCs and “operational excellence.”