Lenovo sets sights on mobile future
China's top PC manufacturer, Lenovo, has invested 5 billion yuan (US$789.9 million) to set up Lenovo Industrial Base, a facility that will mainly focus on research and development (R&D) and production of Web-enabled mobile devices.
According to the company's press release Monday, the new site in Wuhan, China, will include integrated facilities for R&D, production and sales of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and will begin operations in October 2013. The investment will be spread over the next five years, it added.
"We are aggressively moving forward into the PC Plus era and with our Mobile Internet Digital Home group actively engaged, we are accelerating development in smartphones, tablets and other mobile Internet terminal markets," Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo, said in a statement.
The company stated that, by 2013, total sales revenue from the Lenovo Industrial Base was expected to reach 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) which would increase to 50 billion yuan (US$7.9 billion) within the next five years. Up to 10,000 job opportunities were projected to be on offer over the coming years, with "several thousand" R&D and management positions for grabs, it added.
Lenovo's latest investment comes amid a slowing global PC market. Gartner had earlier revealed that worldwide PC shipments totaled 89 million units in the first quarter of 2012, a 1.9 percent increase year-on-year. The research firm said growth outlook remained cautious as the market awaits the arrival of Ivy Bridge processors and Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.