Hands up who wants a PC? Lenovo reports declining returns Lenovo profits took a nosedive for the second consecutive quarter as demand for personal computers continues to slump in the face of a crappy economy. Turnover from sales for Lenovo's Q1 of its fiscal 2025 ended [PDF] June 30 fell by almost a quarter year-on-year to $12.9 billion and net income plunged 66 percent to $177 …
My T480 is nearing its end of life. My colleague had an L480 and joined a month after me, but it died a couple of months back - it looks like that generation of Ls had a lot of problems with dry soldering joints, bad BIOS updates, it throttled itself to 400Mhz on several ocassions, for example.
But so many laptops were purchased during covid for employees to work from home and will not be replaced anytime soon. The PC market had been in a slow downtrend for 10 years, then covid hit and sales returned to their previous peak levels. The problem is that was just bringing forward purchases that would have been made in the future, so I expect this downturn to be ugly indeed for the PC industry with recovery not coming until at least 2025 when the covid bubble of purchases starts reaching replacement age - and all that will do is get back to the previous downturn trendline that was interrupted in 2020.
Quite - these stories about slow computer sales recently always seem to miss this point! We bought loads of laptops in 2020-21, and that has now slowed to a trickle. The problem in the future is going to be trying to get it balanced out again, so that (assuming five year lifecycle), we are replavcng around a fifth of the total number each year. Currently, with the significant move from desktops to laptops, we have about 80% of them theoretically due for replacement in the same year.
Are you sure it’s a crappy economy and not plain stupidity in the numbers reporting and analysis?
So we’ve had a couple for years of exceptional demand due to CoViD and people working from home, however, nowthings are returning to normal, it’s a “crappy economy” because people are not buying like they were in lockdown. Perhaps a more sane analysis would be to compare this years figures with the years prior to CoViD to see the real extent to which demand may have fallen in what is a mature market.
Evidence of poor analysis comes in the last few patagraghs: “PCs are "regressing" to pre-COVID-19 norms” ie. the current levels of shipments are still higher than pre-CoViD shipment levels, which without the CoViD peak would be cause for celebration.
It's worse than that. Pre-COVID, only people who really wanted or needed a laptop purchased one.
Along came COVID and suddenly, everyone needed one.
Now the splurge is over, and hardware no longer increases performance 10% per year. You can buy the lowest cost phablet and still manage your email and watch YouTube without issue.
It's going to be at least three more years before anyone feels like they actually need a new laptop - barring hardware failures, of course. For most people, they've got one and they don't use it any more, so it'll just pick up dust until they change jobs.
Sorry, Lenovo, my crystal ball doesn't give a very favorable outlook to your future CEO bonuses.
The big selling point of Thinkpads was ease of repairability and upgradability. The trend towards soldered-in memory and non-upgradable storage means a lot of people who were previously happy to pay a premium to buy a Thinkpad don't see the point any more. One of their big selling points has gone, so why bother?
My 2nd hand lenovo laptop (wrong, 3rd hand, at least), around 5 years old, has just one reasonably repairable / replaceable component (internal battery). Well, ok, give them that much: also ONE upgradable component, i.e. sdd. And since that time the spit out 'new' generation every.single.year. And it's a thinkpad. My point? Lenovo are deadweight, and killed thinkpad. Then, in a few years' time (maybe!) they'll wake up to realize that dell-upgradable/repairable 'standard' has become mainstream, and they start thinking how to imitate this fashion...
"The big selling point of Thinkpads was ease of repairability and upgradability."
And once upon a time, good non-chicklet keyboards; but my 2012-vintage T520 is the last (or maybe last-but-one) generation before Lenovo, like all the rest, caved to the thinner-at-all-costs imperative. Not sure what I'll do when it finally gives up the ghost.
I have a Lenovo laptop. Soldered on, not upgradable, RAM, check. Soldered on, not upgradable, SSD, check. Soldered on, not upgradable, battery, check. It’s a single unit, obviously intended to be disposable rather than repairable, even if it did cost close to $1000. I found out after purchase; my fault, I should have looked closer before buying. The good news: it’s not a Dell or an HP. When it starts giving trouble, it will be discarded, as repairs would be… difficult. The replacement will probably not be a Lenovo, not unless the RAM, drive, and battery can be replaced/updated. Lenovo got my money… once.
>I have a Lenovo laptop.
So you have a consumer grade laptop made by Lenovo, rather than a Thinkpad - also made by Lenovo but intended for business usage. The limitations you note are normal for consumer laptops and really cheap business laptops.
Unfortunately, DDR5 is changing this, as many are now soldering this in rather than using removable SoDIMMs.
If my experience this year is anything to go by, it's a wonder they sold any machines at all - I gave up trying to buy from them after multiple orders were sat on for a month at a time before being just cancelled.
As per Zippy's comment, their laptops are off my list now that practically all of them are Apple-style disposable junk.
If you sell to the US you regularly have to fill in forms stating you don't knowingly use equipment from companies in the banned entity list (Huawei, Hikvision, etc).
It's not unthinkable that Lenovo might one day be added to that list, which for us was enough of reason for a blanket ban on new Lenovo purchases. Who wants the hassle of replacing several thousand laptops? Fuck that.
They don't make them like they used to.
During the covid lockdown in 2020, I bought two new Lenovo laptops. A V14 for my son and a fully loaded Thinkpad L15 for my wife. Both of them came with a 1 year warranty and both of them had serious non-repairable hardware failures in under 2 years. Corporate buyers might not care too much about the longevity of their laptops, but I spent my own hard earned money on these expecting to get 7 to 8 years of service out of them. I would be very reluctant to buy Lenovo computers again.
I am typing this on a old Lenovo G580 from 2013, for which the Thinkpad was bought as a replacement.
Which variant of the L15?
I've purchased the AMD variant and out of 10 after two years only had one where the default/preferred USB-C charging port has failed.
Also got 10 Dell Vostro 15's (AMD variant) of similar vintage, no problems as yet...
But both suck when it comes to video, as the standard webcam is 720p and the noise cancelling isn't noteworthy... Fortunately, I also invested in iPads and stands along with wireless earbuds for video calling...
I know of at least one client who were asking staff if they had the space at home to support working from the desktop/screen because they just could not get enough laptops quickly enough, and pulling laptops back from anyone who agreed to take a desktop system home to redeploy to those without the space for a desktop system. They did gradually replace those desktops, but most asked to keep the larger screens.
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