BEIJING (AP) — Lenovo Group, the world’s biggest personal computer maker, said Thursday its latest quarterly profit rose 19 percent, driven by sales growth outside its home China market.
Profit rose to $262 million, or 2.5 cents per share, in the three months ended Sept. 30, the company said. Revenue rose 7 percent to $10.5 billion.
Lenovo, with headquarters in Beijing and in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar effort to expand beyond its traditional PC business into mobile devices, infrastructure to support them and business services.
Last month, it completed its $2.9 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google Inc., which Lenovo said made it the third-largest global smartphone manufacturer. In September, the company announced the completion of its $2.1 billion purchase of IBM Corp.’s low-end server business.
“Mobile and Enterprise are now our new growth engines, and over time, like PCs, they will become our profit pool as well,” said chairman Yang Yuanqing in a statement.
Quarterly sales in China declined 2 percent from the same quarter last year, offset by a 33 percent rise in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and a 3 percent rise in the Asia-Pacific region. Sales in North America were flat.
Sales of smartphones, tables and other mobile devices declined 6 percent while those of Lenovo’s traditional desktop PCs rose 6.4 percent. The company said smartphone shipments rose 38 percent.
Also Thursday, Lenovo announced the appointment of Yahoo Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang as an independent non-executive member of its board of directors.
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