Lenovo bucks trend in desktop PC market with £101m Q2 profits

PC maker Lenovo bucked the trend in the ailing desktop market, showing a 13% increase in profits for the second quarter of $162m (£101m).

But the Q2 results represent a slow-down in the Chinese PC manufacturer’s growth, having posted profit increase of 30% in its fiscal first quarter and a sales increase of 44%.

The news comes as the desktop PC market faces continual decline, with customers increasingly opting for mobile devices.

PC shipments in Western Europe dropped 15% year-on-year, according to analyst firm Gartner. In the UK 3 million units were sold in the third quarter of 2012, a decline of 7.2% compared with Q3 2011.

Lenovo increased its share in the Western European PC market overall by 2%, said Gartner. Lenovo was also the only top five PC vendor to show growth this quarter. This was in part due to its aggressive position on pricing in the professional PC market, said Gartner.

Meike Escherich, principal analyst at Gartner, said: "The PC market will eventually return to growth, but the growth rate will not be at the level it was a few years ago.

“The real long-term challenges for the PC industry and PC vendors are to show growth and bring out products that can compete with the compelling new mobile devices coming on to the market.”