Lenovo challenges PC market trends with record quarter

PC shipments may be experiencing a slow decline as more people shift their attention to smaller, cheaper, and more portable computing devices like tablets. But that isn’t stopping Lenovo from posting its best quarter ever. During the three month period ended December 31 the company logged $9.4 billion in revenue, a 12% increase from the year before, while its quarterly profit leaped 34% year-on-year to a record $205 million.

The Chinese firm has been the fastest-growing PC company for 13 consecutive quarters and is vying with Hewlett-Packard to become the world's biggest PC maker by shipment volume -- according to IDC they briefly took the crown during the third quarter of 2012 and it’s just a matter of time before they leap past HP again.

Lenovo’s laptop shipments during the quarter were up 9.5% year over year and continue to be the largest revenue contributor for the company at $4.8 billion. Desktop PC shipments -- including their all-in-one range -- also rose 5.8% globally while revenue from this market amounted to $2.8 billion.

The company credited its ‘Protect and Attack’ strategy for their healthy results. That is protecting the two profit pools of global commercial PC and the China businesses, while attacking three high growth opportunities: emerging markets, global consumer and ‘PC Plus’ products such as smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. Revenue from the latter three in particular rose 77% year-on-year to $998 million, achieving profitability for the first time, while its smartphone market share grew in China with plans to expand to five new markets in 2013.