Old guard storms boardroom at ailing Lenovo

Lenovo's old guard Chinese management parachuted back into the boardroom yesterday as it released third quarter numbers that showed its shipments dropping faster than the industry average in every market except China. Sales at the Beijing-based PC vendor slipped 20.1 per cent to $3.6bn in the quarter ending December 31, while …

[Hollerith]

They should have sniffed harder...

... when IBM were selling. They would have smelled a rat. No one gets rid of a division where future profits look great.

[Anonymous Coward]

@They should have sniffed harder...

Perhaps not a fair comment. Chinese business has only really been outward looking beyond simple supply for a few years so. Maybe they'll learn for this (in fact, I think they will). On the flip side, some of the more cynical among us expected a credit crunch and global recession (though few if none foresaw a near total collapse of the global banking system and the end of the financial world as we know it - certainly gave me a fright).

[AJames]

Self damage

Lenovo still makes great computers for a small price premium, as I found when I recently compared them to other vendors on a laptop purchase. But they wanted 5+ weeks for delivery. Problems with the supply chain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Understandable

I can understand why the profit margin is sinking is North America. Their desktop computers are CRAP. I work at a company where our head office forces us to use Lenovo computers. We had 12 installed about a year ago. So far, we have had 9 of them repaired, usually for the same problem. When I try to get IBM (who sells,warranties and repairs the Lenovo computers) to check the other computers, they say we will have to pay for that as it is not included under our warranty. I had a chat with the IBM tech that usually comes to repair them, and even he said the Lenovo computers were crap.

[Martin Harnevie]

The button swappers will all fold

Those notebook manufacturers which have swapped the 'Fn' and 'Ctrl' buttons, i.e. 'Fn' in the left corner, will, like Lenovo, rapidly lose market share the coming years. As the average typing skills of the world's population are increasing, the need to reduce typos grows, and hence the need for consistent keyboards grows.

Likewise, those notebook manufacturers that have employed the intuitive 'Fn'+'Arrow' for 'Pg Up', 'Pg Dn', 'Home' and 'End' will be the most successful over time.