Lenovo's PC stock has fallen to "very, very low levels" as pandemic increases demand

[midian182]

Why it matters: It’s not just consoles, graphics cards, and processors that are struggling to keep up with demand—PC manufacturers are feeling the effects, too. Lenovo, the largest PC vendor globally, has warned that its stock has reached one-third of normal levels due to the pandemic and more people working from home.

According to a recent report from market research group Canalys, 2020 saw global PC shipments reach their highest levels in five years. 458.2 million units were shipped, a 16 percent increase compared to the previous year.

Lenovo took the largest slice of the PC pie in 2020, shipping 87 million devices (19 percent), but that demand has impacted stock levels. Gianfranco Lanci, COO at Lenovo, said (via The Resister) that its shipments during the final quarter of the year would have been even higher were it not for the “limitations on supply.”

The Reg notes that most tech distributors keep around six weeks of stock to avoid running short, but Lanci says, “in some cases during last quarter we were down to two or three weeks, so we were down to very, very low levels.”

It appears the situation isn’t going to change any time soon; Lanci says that there have been no signs of demand slowing down since the winter quarter. Lenovo’s CEO, Yang Yuanqing, believes that the extra time people now spend on PCs and tablets will result in faster replacement cycles, adding further pressure, and the company expects PC shipments will continue to grow over the next few years.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88522-lenovo-pc-stock-has-fallen-low-levels-pandemic.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Whether you're a parent or a student, chances are you needed to rush out and buy a desktop or laptop/chromebook/tablet to work from home.

Supplies should increase as more off-the-shelf units become available.

 

[Torrentius]

Yeah, right, because you need to replace your work/learn from home PC every season. At some point market has to be saturated enough for the demand to slow down a lot. We are one year into the pandemic already, most people that needed new HW most likely already bought it.

If you have a 5 year old i5 laptop, it will most likely last you another 5 years for light tasks. If you need better machine, because you do more than browsing websites, working with documents or spreadsheets and a video-meeting app, you work in a field that got you a work-computer long time ago and they upgrade it every two to three years anyway.

 

[McKocoa]

Dell and HP have plenty. I try to not buy from Chinese owned companies.

 

[psycros]

Yeah, right, because you need to replace your work/learn from home PC every season. At some point market has to be saturated enough for the demand to slow down a lot. We are one year into the pandemic already, most people that needed new HW most likely already bought it.

If you have a 5 year old i5 laptop, it will most likely last you another 5 years for light tasks. If you need better machine, because you do more than browsing websites, working with documents or spreadsheets and a video-meeting app, you work in a field that got you a work-computer long time ago and they upgrade it every two to three years anyway.

An awful lot of places don't let you take your work computer home with you.

 

[Torrentius]

An awful lot of places don't let you take your work computer home with you.

And during the past year most people that needed a computer to work/learn from home, as their employeer didn't provide one, bought it already. They won't need to replace them for the next five or more years. There is no reason for faster replacement cycles, as Lenovo CEO states.

People that need to replace their work computer every two years or so work in fields that do this anyway - like the IT crowd.

I see no reason for the demand to be as high as in 2020. Huge corporations might be more wary of spare work from home equipment, but us small folks won't have reasons to hoard more devices. Any 2020 laptop bought for Teams and Office will do perfectly fine in 2021, 2022 and maybe will start to show its age in 2025.

 

[punctualturn]

Since Dell refuses to carry Ryzen on their business lines, Optiplex, Latitude and Precision (because Intel bribery, but I'm sure that there is a loser gamer here that will say otherwise), we started moving our fleet to Lenovo.

But we placed an initial order of around 200 laptops, a couple of months ago and they haven't arrived yet.

This is something that definitely needs attention, but I understand that a new fab cannot be simply built in a day, so its a tight spot for everyone.

 

[p51d007]

And they could also be "hyping" up supply shortages, so they can jack up the price too.

 

[ET3D]

"The Resister"?

 

[Kosmoz]

Dell and HP have plenty. I try to not buy from Chinese owned companies.

It's ok, they don't care, they are already selling more than anyone else...

 

[TheBigFatClown]

Dell and HP have plenty. I try to not buy from Chinese owned companies.

Is Lenovo a Chinese company? I never realized that from the name. My next laptop purchase will be either from ASUS or HP. Hopefully ASUS is not Chinese. The Chinese wanna destroy America.They do make a lot of good products though at cheap prices. It makes it harder to pass up sometimes.

 

[texasrattler]

Asus is Taiwanese. Also there real name is AsusTek but everyone just says Asus, even they do.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Yeah, right, because you need to replace your work/learn from home PC every season. At some point market has to be saturated enough for the demand to slow down a lot. We are one year into the pandemic already, most people that needed new HW most likely already bought it.

If you have a 5 year old i5 laptop, it will most likely last you another 5 years for light tasks. If you need better machine, because you do more than browsing websites, working with documents or spreadsheets and a video-meeting app, you work in a field that got you a work-computer long time ago and they upgrade it every two to three years anyway.

If you do have a 5 year old laptop, chances are it has a HDD loaded with a garbage image full of trash. Unfortunatly, many dont have the skills to reinstall windows or put a SSD in an old computer.

More money for us though!

Also: if you have family/friends who have older computers, please encourage them to upgrade their systems instead of replacing them! Even a core 2 era system works well enough with 8GB of RAM and a nice sata SSD.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Also: if you have family/friends who have older computers, please encourage them to upgrade their systems instead of replacing them! Even a core 2 era system works well enough with 8GB of RAM and a nice sata SSD.

I use a 12 year old laptop with those specs every day and can even get most of my job done on it as it's mostly web-based. I usually don't as I have another machine with better ergonomics but sometimes when the sunny Kitchen is the warmest room in the house, 15" 1440x900, 2.8G C2D, 8GB and a 500 SSD are good enough.

 

[flee2020]

Dell and HP have plenty. I try to not buy from Chinese owned companies.

It is a very difficult thing to do - even if you buy from HP or Dell, a large proportion of the components are made by Chinese owned companies in China.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Yeah, right, because you need to replace your work/learn from home PC every season. At some point market has to be saturated enough for the demand to slow down a lot. We are one year into the pandemic already, most people that needed new HW most likely already bought it.

If you have a 5 year old i5 laptop, it will most likely last you another 5 years for light tasks. If you need better machine, because you do more than browsing websites, working with documents or spreadsheets and a video-meeting app, you work in a field that got you a work-computer long time ago and they upgrade it every two to three years anyway.

Yeah, except I'm due for a replacement right now. They better not make me wait for my shiney new Surface Pro 7+.

 

[Torrentius]

I use a 12 year old laptop with those specs every day and can even get most of my job done on it as it's mostly web-based. I usually don't as I have another machine with better ergonomics but sometimes when the sunny Kitchen is the warmest room in the house, 15" 1440x900, 2.8G C2D, 8GB and a 500 SSD are good enough.

C2D 1,6GHz 2GB DDR2 running Lubuntu 18.04 (last i386 version) is my away from home computer right now, as I gave an i5-5200U Dell Latitude to family for distance education. Does good enough with web browsing, though it weights almost 3kg...

Put an SSD inside (even the cheapest one, as all those old laptops use SATA2), chose the right OS and old HW will amaze you.

 

[Gomos]

Is Lenovo a Chinese company? I never realized that from the name. My next laptop purchase will be either from ASUS or HP. Hopefully ASUS is not Chinese. The Chinese wanna destroy America.They do make a lot of good products though at cheap prices. It makes it harder to pass up sometimes.

Meh, Lenovo is mostly Chinese but has strong ties with US. At some point the headquarters were even in US. That is why there are not pointing it out as an enemy like with Huawei or Xiaomi.

So when are the Chinese destroying America? I can hardly wait.

 

[flee2020]

Is Lenovo a Chinese company? I never realized that from the name. My next laptop purchase will be either from ASUS or HP. Hopefully ASUS is not Chinese. The Chinese wanna destroy America.They do make a lot of good products though at cheap prices. It makes it harder to pass up sometimes.

IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo. So it had its origins in the US and the Chinese company has tried to build on the IBM image rather than develop a Chinese identity. That is why we still see ThinkPads in their product range.

More background on this: https://time.com/3845674/lenovo-ibm/

 

[poohbear]

An awful lot of places don't let you take your work computer home with you.

That was prepandemic. How can u NOT take ur work laptop home if everyone is working from home?