Lenovo promises to up PC building to meet working from home demand

The pandemic has led many businesses to allow their employees to work from home and Lenovo is betting that the remote working trend will continue once the crisis subsides.

According to B2B sales data from a NPD blog post, notebook sales increased by almost 30 percent year-over-year during the last week of February and then saw a 60 increase during the first two weeks of March. 

Many employees were not properly equipped to work from home at the beginning of the outbreak which is why sales of laptops, monitors and computer accessories boomed during the early days of the pandemic.

In a recent earnings call, Lenovo said that its PC and smart devices group jumped by four percent year-on-year though factory closures in China had limited its supply of products. This meant that the company was unable to leverage demand during Q4, though orders kept coming in. 

Meeting demand

Chief operating officer and corporate president of Lenovo, Gianfranco Lanci explained why the company is betting that the remote working trend will continue after the crisis, saying:

“People will continue to work from home even after the crisis, maybe not at the same level, not to 100%, but for sure a good percentage of people will continue to use at home, because it’s proven that it’s more efficient from a company point of view and it’s also better perceiver and from a employee point of view.”

Lanci also believes the households in mature markets will move from having one or two PCs per family to having one PC per person in every home due to remote working, distance learning and entertainment and online shopping. 

On the enterprise side, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing said that “many big corporate enterprise customers are still looking to buy or refresh employees notebooks and this looks likely to be a long-term trend”. As a result of this, he thinks it is possible that the total addressable PC market will increase by 25 to 30 percent in two or three years.

Remote working is likely here to stay and Lenovo as well as other PC makers are going to be working hard to meet demand after shortages and shipping delays prevented consumers and businesses from upgrading their systems at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak.

Via The Register