Lenovo Says Business will Focus on Mobile Internet

BEIJING (AP) - Lenovo Group expects wireless Internet products to account for up to 80 percent of its sales within five years as it pursues expansion in faster-growing emerging markets, CEO Yang Yuanqing said Friday.

Lenovo, the world's fourth-largest personal computer maker, jumped into the mobile Internet market in January with the unveiling of a smart phone and two Web-linked portable computers.

"Mobile Internet is very important," Yang said in an interview. "Even today, cheap notebooks sales already are higher than desktops. Mobile Internet products are going to be 70 to 80 percent of our sales ... within three to five years."

Yang said Lenovo plans this year to focus on promoting mobile Internet and sales in emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Lenovo, based in Beijing and Morrisville, North Carolina, was hit hard by the global crisis, which prompted its core corporate customers to slash spending and go for refurbished cheap laptops. It suffered three losing quarters before rebounding to a profit in the second half of last year.

Yang said Lenovo's longer-term strategy, dubbed "protect and attack," calls for building up its dominant presence in China. The country accounts for nearly half of Lenovo's global sales but it faces competition from industry leaders Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., which are creating products tailored to Chinese customers.

In the latest quarter, Lenovo said cheap computers sales in India and other emerging markets rose 52 percent over a year earlier, far ahead of the 13 percent sales growth reported for the United States and Western Europe.

Lenovo, which acquired IBM Corp.'s PC unit in 2005, says its global market share last year rose to 9 percent, its highest level to date.

Yang said Lenovo has no plans for foreign acquisitions but is ready to look at any deals that fit its strategic plans for mobile SEO.

Corporate spending on computers has yet to rebound but companies are expected to step up purchasing in the second half of this year, Yang said. He said he could not foresee when global discount PCs sales might recover to pre-crisis levels.

"I'm not an economist," he said. "Even for economists, it's difficult to forecast."

God Bless This Laptop: London Vicar Welcomes Techies

USA Today

A venerable British church has done what e-mail addicts and workaholics have been doing for years — invoking the Almighty's blessing on their high-tech gadgets.

The Rev. Canon David Parrott blessed a symbolic heap of laptops and smart phones on the altar of London's 17th-century St. Lawrence Jewry church Monday. An effort, he said, to remind the capital's busy office workers that God's grace can reach them in many ways - even through their PCs.

"It's the technology that is our daily working tool, and it's a technology we should bless," Parrott said.

The short blessing capped Monday's services at the Christopher Wren-designed building — the official church of the Corporation of the City of London, which runs the capital's bustling financial district.

Parishioners took out cellphones and laptops as Parrott recited a blessing over them and their electronic devices. A few held their phones up in the air as he ran through the prayer.

Parrott said the blessing ceremony was an update of a traditional back-to-work ceremony called "Plow Monday," in which villagers gathered to bless a symbolic farming implement dragged to the church's door. Parrott said that ceremony didn't have much relevance for his church, which was "nowhere near a field in the middle of London." This then was more of a "Computers Monday".

Parrott took up his post at St. Lawrence Jewry (so-called because it stands in what was once the capital's Jewish neighborhood) about seven months ago and said the updated ceremony was "a fresh idea for a fresh post."

He said he hoped the ceremony had made worship "lively and relevant to the people who work nearby, in the financial district."

Parrot said parishioners were welcome to leave their notebooks on during the service — so long as they kept them on silent.

H-P's Profit Sapped by PC, Printer Declines

By The Wall Street Journal

Hewlett-Packard Co. posted a 19% drop in quarterly profit as sales fell sharply in several of its key businesses, but the technology giant said it was seeing a "stabilized market" and suggested that technology spending has hit bottom.

The computer, monitor and printer maker produced earnings of $1.64 billion, or 67 cents a share, for the quarter ended July 31, down from $2.03 billion, or 80 cents a share, a year ago.

H-P's quarterly revenue fell 2% to $27.45 billion from $28.03 billion a year earlier, despite several billion dollars in additional revenue from tech-services company Electronic Data Systems, which H-P acquired last year.

Still, the Palo Alto, Calif., company beat the quarterly forecasts it gave Wall Street in May and H-P reaffirmed its financial guidance from earlier this year.

What's driving revenue is a stabilized market in the United States and Asia Pacific.

H-P shares declined 2% in after-hours trading to $43.07 after ending 4 p.m. trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $43.96, up 85 cents.

While H-P's overall results showed some weakness, sales of PCs and used computers have begun to pick up with the back to school push.

The quarter was H-P's second consecutive period of declining revenue, as reduced corporate spending and falling PC prices slammed the entire tech sector.

Since Chief Executive Mark Hurd took over the company in 2005, H-P has slashed costs and steadily increased its profits, growing to be the world's largest tech company by revenue and beating out PC competitors.

But since last year, the recession has hurt the company's growth. In the latest quarter, revenue declined across almost all of H-P's businesses.

The company, which is the world's largest manufacturer of PCs, reported PC revenue of $8.43 billion for the quarter, down 18% from last year, despite 2% growth in shipments. Operating profit in the PC division fell 34% as computer prices plummeted.

Pricing pressures are also weighing on H-P's biggest rival, Dell Inc., which is set to report quarterly results Aug. 27. Wall Street is expecting Dell's revenue to decline more than 20% in the quarter.

Revenue in H-P's servers and storage division, which sells back-office computing equipment to businesses, fell 23% to $3.66 billion.

Meanwhile, H-P's printer unit saw revenue decline 20% to $5.66 billion as customers cut back on ink and printing supplies.

In H-P's software unit, operating profit rose 13%, despite a 22% revenue decline to $847 million.

H-P is cutting 24,600 jobs as part of the EDS deal, and in May announced a separate round of 6,400 job cuts.