China’s Lenovo branches out from traditional PCs

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Currently taking place in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is an annual fixture at which the world's tech manufacturers get together to launch the next big things in technology and start the trends for each year.

One company making ambitious moves this year is Chinese PC giant Lenovo. It has ventured into new product categories with a tablet-laptop hybrid named Miix 630 and a standalone virtual reality (VR) headset, the Mirage Solo. Both have grabbed a lot of attention.

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2017 was another big year for VR, augmented reality (AR), and every other type of reality, and it looks like 2018 will be likewise. The Mirage Solo interested many tech giants, but some questioned the risks of PC companies investing in those innovations.

However, Christian Teismann, North America president of Lenovo, said that innovating and being prepared to take risks is the key to surviving and thriving as the world moves away from old-fashioned desk-top computers.

“If you look at how Lenovo has become a global company, it is because we always invested in new product categories. Some failed, but most of them really made a difference and changed the market,” said Teismann.

Lenovo has dropped a huge number of new tech devices on this year’s CES. With numerous new computing devices appearing on the market, Teismann was asked if PCs are threatened with extinction.

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“It is a transformation. What you see is that the traditional replacement cycles of the traditional desktops or notebooks are getting longer and longer. Therefore, people do not need to buy a PC every three years or four years anymore,” he replied.

Teismann predicted big changes in the global PC market as these computers’ makers get involved in AR and VR.

Global PC sales in the third quarter of 2017 dropped by 0.5 percent year-on-year, while Lenovo’s sales increased by 0.1 percent, he said.