Lenovo has confirmed that it will slash 2,500 jobs, or 11 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring plan to cut costs after the firm's sales were hit by weakening global demand. China's largest (and the world's fourth largest) computer maker expects savings of about $300 million in the fiscal year ending March 2010 and said it would book a charge of about $150 million this fiscal year.
Managers and executives will be let go, including the company's senior vice president for the Americas, as well as workers in positions including human resources, finance and marketing. The actions announced today by Lenovo also include consolidating its China and Asia Pacific outfits into a single Asia Pacific and Russia business unit and a few shifts in management.
The past few months have been tough on Lenovo - as with pretty much every other PC maker - but the Chinese company's market share particularly shrank to 7.7 percent in the third quarter of 2008 (down from 8.2 percent a year earlier) and saw its earnings fall by 78 percent. A slowdown in China was partly to blame for the drop, alongside increasing competition from HP and Dell in that region.