Heads to roll at Lenovo amid 'severe downturn' in PC sales

Lenovo is entering cost cutting mode following the second straight quarterly decline in sales, and plunging profits for the first time since 2020, as the industry faces weakening demand for personal computers. At a group level, revenue for Q3 of Lenovo's fiscal 2023 [PDF] ended 3 December was $15.26 billion, down 24 percent …

[elsergiovolador]

Perceptiveness

I wonder if they noticed that the CPUs they stuff in the machines have been very much the same for years?

Just add a core here or tweak the freq there.

Year on year basically the same laptops.

I have one that's been released in 2018 and it is basically as good as if I bought a new one today for what I am using it.

I paid for it less than £100.

Lenovo needs to wake up. If they don't come up with something better than M1, they are going to flop.

Neither Intel nor AMD have CPU on offer that could match M1 in laptop type of device.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Perceptiveness

You're basically right: notebooks have seen little innovation over the last five years. Screens have gone hi-res, batteries a bit bigger, weight a little less. The M1 isn't really a workhorse like beefy AMD and Intel chips are but later releases have got better in this respect. But Apple wins outright on battery usage and the PC market will have to wait for Microsoft to get its arse ARM in gear.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Perceptiveness

The M1 isn't really a workhorse like beefy AMD and Intel chips

That depends - M1 Max beats anything I have used so far, including "beefy" AMD and Intel chips.

For instance when running a test suite - on my i9 laptop, I had to wait 15 minutes for it to complete and system was very much unusable throughout that time, not to mention the fan noise.

With M1 it finishes under 2 minutes and while the fans engage towards the end, I can't hear them and machine is responsive and I can do other tasks in the meantime.

It's completely next level in every aspect.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Perceptiveness

Suddenly it's an M1 Max you're talking about? Doesn't matter, this tells us more about your test suite than anything else. I have a Mac and I love ARM chips but the M1 is not really next level when it comes to CPU design, rather a very wll put together package.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Perceptiveness

I was talking of M1 as a family and M1 Max is what I have. I hope it makes it clear.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Perceptiveness

An i9 laptop isn't a workhorse so it's odd to say it isn't. i9 also doesn't designate anything other than the generation. I just did a custom build AMD for a new Linux desktop. It absolutely slaughters a new Mac laptop for big tasks, but its also never going to be portable. Desktop workstations, desktop office computers, and laptops are all very different categories with different expectations.

I did a custom build because the major computer companies looked like they were mostly targeting office hardware. That stuff is meant to be cheap and boring for viewing spreadsheets and e-mail. Even the gaming rigs were more LEDs than anything else. It's no surprise that they'd complain about reduced sales.

[Julian 8]

Re: Perceptiveness

My main workhorse is a T460 from 2016. Going strong. I have a T450 for a front room, X240 in another along with a couple of spares (2 x x240 and x230)

Only thing making me think of upgrading is the misses who is now used to touch screen via work and bemoans each time she uses the front room T450 or X240.

Looking there have been 7/8 generations of Lenovo laptop for the T family since, and I doubt if much has improved for what my typical usage is.

(only got a T460 as a T450 really did die and I needed another laptop that could dock, the T470 that I was looking at, could not use the docking station which made the T460 the one I had to get)

[Roland6]

Re: Perceptiveness

> I needed another laptop that could dock

As far as I'm aware (from my experience) if your laptop supports USB3, it will happily dock with a USB hub/port replicator(*); of which there are many available from the usual places. This avoids the frustrations with the laptop make and model specific docking stations that you have encountered. Although attend carefully to the video specifications, as whilst most will support HD on VGA/HDMI few will support multiple or 4k monitors.

A basic one I use is the HP 3001pr which will power - but not charge the laptop, but will charge a mobile phone, it works fine with Dell and Lenovo laptops with no explicit driver installation required (ie. W10 finds and installs the correct drivers) ...

[Roland6]

Re: Perceptiveness

>Lenovo needs to wake up. If they don't come up with something better than M1

But do they?

My AMD Ryzen 7 Thinkpad (okay 2020 model) is a massive overkill for your typical user, which can be had for £700~800 from Lenovo (and Dell's Vostro version is cheaper). The laugh is you can have the intel variant for a premium but you will get significantly lower performance...

I think AMD with Zen 3 have put a lot of pressure on Intel, in some ways Intel probably needs to discontinue their bottom-end processor ranges...

However, Windows laptop vendors need to do much better in the audio and video areas - both where a 'cheap' iPad will out-perform a top-end gaming/multimedia Windows laptop.

[doublelayer]

Re: Perceptiveness

"I think AMD with Zen 3 have put a lot of pressure on Intel, in some ways Intel probably needs to discontinue their bottom-end processor ranges..."

I doubt it. AMD's lower-end CPUs aren't that plentiful, whereas the former Celerons can be found anywhere you want them. For many cases, this isn't that interesting, but it does mean that Intel can get almost total market share in low-power, cheap CPUs that can run Windows and generic X86 Linux. Not only can you get a bunch of cheap small desktops using such chips, but they're also very popular for people building custom systems that use an AMD64 processor as the main chip but don't need fast performance. They're also capable for basic desktop use (as long as you're careful not to skimp on the RAM as well if you're running Windows), which can open an area of cheap computers for users that don't need too much.

In fact, the higher-end Intel parts are the ones that interest me less. Sure, a 24-core chip with heterogeneous core types can get some nice benchmark numbers and would probably be nice for parallelized compile runs, but I don't spend much of my day doing those and the rest of the time, the chip consumes a lot of power. They're also quite expensive. I bet they sell more chips like the Pentium N6005 than the I9-13900K.

[Mike 137]

"the industry faces weakening demand for personal computers"

I wonder how much this results from Windows 11.

[doublelayer]

I can answer that one: not at all. Windows 11 is basically irrelevant to most device purchases. It won't encourage anyone at least until 2025 and probably not much then either, and it won't dissuade them. It won't even dissuade people who hate Windows, because they don't care whether it's Windows 10 or 11 they wipe out before installing the thing they're interested in.

The reason for the decline isn't Windows 11. It's because coincidentally, a while before Windows 11 came out, people had to buy a ton of laptops to deal with pandemic situations that required them, and all of those work just fine. A lot of demand got consolidated from last year and this year and dumped onto 2020. All those are capable of running Windows 11 for those who want it, although the last time this paper had an adoption statistics article, that wasn't a lot of people. Combine that with the fact that an old laptop is usually fine and you have a recipe for falling demand no matter what the software is.

[Tams]

Very much this.

It's also why Chromebook sales have cratered. Lenovo should count themselves lucky that demand for new Windows systems hasn't plumetted so badly.

[lockt-in]

Chromebook’s crazy growth in markeshare came at the cost of Windows losing market share, whilst Apples market share continued to grow. PCs/Microsoft have taken a hammering in marketshare. Apples marketshare is still getting bigger at the cost of all others. The Arm-Apple silicon M1 thing is a rockstar.

But also a lot of people just do things on their phones now, or tablet. Mobile devices have had a bigger marketshare than PCs for years. I think the proportion is growing. PC/Windows is tanking, intel/AMD progress has been dull for many years now.

[Grunchy]

You can run the entire XT experience on ESP32

I am not exaggerating when I say you can get an ESP32 delivered to your door for under $3.50.

It’s got enough jam to run WordPerfect and Quattro Pro, what’s wrong with that? That’s enough to do everything they want for a B.Sc. degree (from first-hand experience!)

[Pascal Monett]

"Now companies including Lenovo, HP and Dell are facing an uphill battle to sell more product"

Well gosh, what a surprise.

I wonder if all the unforcasted units sold during COVID lockdowns might have an effect.

As in, now everybody has a PC / laptop or equivalent, even those who thought they didn't need one.

You ever seen someone going to a restaurant after having just eaten ? I haven't.

Cut the marketing budget ? Yeah, that's good. Nobody's buying because everyone is equipped.

Come back in a few years. You'll be useful by then.

Right now, you can hibernate. But stop whinging. You've had your buttered bread.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Now companies including Lenovo, HP and Dell are facing an uphill battle to sell more product"

Right now, you can hibernate.

Can you? Most laptops have this feature broken...

Ever opened your bag only to see laptop whizzing and crying for help while being hot like a lava, when you thought it hibernated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Now companies including Lenovo, HP and Dell are facing an uphill battle to sell more product"

Oh, it hibernated just fine, until Windows' obligatory updates woke it up, and then didn't shut it down afterwards.

Even worse if you have a BIOS password set, so that it boots to BIOS and then sits at full power waiting for the password, until it either coks or the battery goes flat.

[man_iii]

Re: "Now companies including Lenovo, HP and Dell are facing an uphill battle to sell more product"

Most of the situation where hibernate broke was in the corporate windows system. My personal Linux systems happily hibernate or sleep or shutdown on command and never shirk their duties. That is why sudo or doas or root is such a good implementation!

[John Brown (no body)]

Renewal are due about now

Most of the customers I deal with replace their kit when the warranty expires. The pandemic panic purchases are, in most cases, about to fall out of their standard 3 year on-site warranty period over the next year, starting about now. At least some have told me they won't be doing the usual full-on replacement cycle though. They'll spread out the purchases and replace as kit fails. They won't be paying for out of warranty repairs. Depending on the customer and their in-house IT peoples time and skills, they may swap some bits about to make working laptops, most probably won't unless it's something simple like battery or SSD.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Renewal are due about now

Our replacement cycle has been largely driven by accounting rules but we're moving to five year replacement cycles. Repairs have become almost impossible. Waiting for over six months for a new display for a Lenovo.

[Roland6]

Re: Renewal are due about now

>Repairs have become almost impossible.

Even with a 4 year premium all risks onsite keep your HDD service contract...

Got one L15 where the USB-C port no longer reliably accepts charge, discovered the USB-C port is directly mounted on the motherboard rather than an easier to replace daughter board...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Renewal are due about now

Try the other USB-C port, next one down from the one normally described as the charging port.. If that works, then the first port is most likely physically damaged. If you get the same result, it MAY be damaged too, more likely it's an issue with the charging circuit on the system board anyway. And yeah, it seems most manufactures have gone down the route of power socket/USB being on the main board these days.

And FWIW, we are getting most Lenovo spares within 3-5 days of ordering now. Still not back to pre-pandemic/supply chain collapse time frames but nowhere near the weeks or months that some parts were taking over the last couple of years, mainly some screen and keyboard models.

[doublelayer]

Re: Renewal are due about now

"Most of the customers I deal with replace their kit when the warranty expires."

They are not like the people I deal with. I probably deal with far fewer organizations than you do since you describe them as customers and I just do it to volunteer for a couple charities. In the set of companies I know about, including those charities and companies that have employed me, all of them replace laptops only when they don't turn on or there are bits dangling off them on wires. I do some repairs when possible when it's a charity and my employer tends not to bother for some reason, but none will discard a computer that's working and none of them cares about it not being on warranty.

[Tams]

Re: Renewal are due about now

Well, it's hardly surprising if a charity holds onto a computer as long as it will work. They do not have the luxury of waste that many large companies have and practise.*

*which in a terrible for the environment, but good in terms of return way, works out cheaper.

[doublelayer]

Re: Renewal are due about now

My employers, however, aren't charities and also hang onto them until they're broken. The only difference is that they don't try very hard to repair them at that point. I was given a secondhand laptop when I started, and it didn't have any warranty I know about on it. I don't know how common that is, and they can be reasonably certain that I could take another laptop from the stores and get it set up for work quickly enough, so waiting for this one to keel over isn't a problem.

[mdubash]

Quality downturn

Have to say that, following 20 years of buying IBM ThinkPads then Lenovo kit of various sorts, usually updating on a three-year cycle, the last two or three systems have disappointed. Cost-cutting shows. Creaky hinges, display backs that fall off or aren't very secure andhinges that fail have all happened over time. It's not even as if the machines had a hard life, certainly not in the last five or six years.

Took me too long to switch vendors: six months ago I bought a 17-inch LG Gram and couldn't be happier with its rock-solid performance and reliability. I can't see me returning to Lenovo.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Quality downturn

The latest Lenovo offerings are basically Chinese-designed junk styled to look like IBM Thinkpads. The American engineers who built the rock-solid IBM Thinkpads have all been let go.

[aregross]

One word...

Saturation

[Alumoi]

Re: One word...

And the solution: planned obsolence. Just like phones.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Smart Thinking

"The smart devices market is in its worst period," CEO Yang Yuanqing said on a webcast, adding that the PC and mobile businesses were suffering from a "severe downturn."

Right now on the Lenovo website...

https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/events/ces/

Smarter technology overcomes obstacles to create shared solutions

From sustainability to healthcare and beyond, smarter technology improves humanity and the world.

[Grunchy]

I love buying Lenovo!

I’ve got X3100 and P30s, what could be the problem?

Obviously I only buy em once they’re about 10 yrs old and depreciated down to $20 or so.

Wicked awesome industrial construction!

The best part is if you call technical support they still have to call you “sir” and answer whatever hare-brain questions you can dream up ! Even if they have to look it up & call you back a couple days later, it’s magnificent. Consumer grade equipt is for SUCKERS.

[andro]

country

Its also that it has become widely enough known that Lenovo is no longer an IBM owned company, but a Chinese company. In this less geopolitically stable world, there are businesses that would no longer touch Lenovo as a brand. Not saying its the only reason, but worth mentioning.

[Roj Blake]

Re: country

Lenovo has never been owned by IBM.