Fun Fact: World’s largest PC maker now sells more smartphones and tablets than PCs

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 15 Aug 2013

Lenovo is a company that rarely elicits an emotional response. There was once a time where ThinkPads were seen as the defacto laptop to own, but these days nearly every member of the press core carries either a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro. Putting that to the side for a second, the Chinese company has just published their fiscal Q1 financial results, and they reveal two key data points. First, Lenovo is now officially the world’s largest PC maker.

Second, and arguably more important, Lenovo is making more money (in terms of revenue) from selling more smarpthones and tablets than they are personal computers. Pretty wild, right?

What sort of conclusions can we draw from this? The PC market is shrinking, this is nothing new. Lenovo is successfully moving from their old “legacy” business to the new hotness known as mobile. Sure, you might not see Lenovo smartphones and tablets on sale in your respective country, but that will soon change as the company puts more and more resources on international expansions.

Can Lenovo become the next Samsung? Not really, because they don’t really manufacture any of the components they use. Rumor has it that they’re working on their own mobile SoC, but that’s quite a ways off.

Update: Lenovo is actually selling more smartphones and tablets in terms of units, not in terms of financial figures. Tip of the hat to @AQRtrades.