Photo: Chen Rui/GT

Tech giant Lenovo launched its 2023 North America kickoff on Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, the US, following the company's 2023/24 fiscal year kickoff meeting held in Beijing on April 6.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, Lenovo maintained a market share of 24 percent in terms of global PC shipments, followed by HP and Dell, while the revenue of its non-PC business reached 41 percent of the total in the quarter.

Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, hailed the progress made at Lenovo's Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG).

ISG has grown into a highly profitable growth engine for Lenovo. In addition to maintaining its position as the highest global market share supplier of TOP 500 high-performance computers, it has rapidly grown into the world's third-largest server provider and the fifth-largest storage device manufacturer. It ranks first in the mainstream storage market, accounting for 61 percent of global shipments. In the 2022/23 fiscal year, ISG business achieved record-breaking performance with revenue of nearly $10 billion, a year-on-year increase of nearly 40 percent, and seven consecutive quarters of profit growth, according to the company's official data.

At the 2022 Lenovo Innovation and Technology Conference, the company introduced for the first time the concept of "ubiquitous computing power" that can bring tangible benefits to users. Lenovo also established its mid-term goal of becoming the world's largest end-to-end infrastructure solution provider.

Over the next three years, the importance of data is expected to continue to grow exponentially, creating greater opportunities for computing power and data management, said Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president of Lenovo Group and president of ISG. He also believes that AI will become an important part of ISG's business products, driving huge demand for solutions. Meanwhile, with a focus on sustainability, "everything as a service" will be achieved through Lenovo's TruScale service.

Lenovo's goal is for ISG to become the world's fastest-growing and ultimately the largest end-to-end infrastructure solutions provider, leveraging technologies such as the metaverse and digital twins, generative AI and ChatGPT, hybrid cloud and edge deployment. Skaugen is confident that they have a clear strategy, strong execution, and an innovative and rich product portfolio.

Yang said that the company will firmly execute its 3S strategy - namely Smart IoT, Smart Infrastructure and Smart Vertical - in the new fiscal year, accelerating its transformation toward a service-oriented approach and vigorously promoting technology-driven innovation. The company aims to become a leader in the Chinese server market within five years by achieving profitable growth and faster-than-market growth.

Rui Yong, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Lenovo, said that computing and AI are anchor technologies for Lenovo in the future.

AI requires intensive computing power, which will create huge demand for Lenovo's businesses, said Matthew Zielinski, president of Lenovo's International Markets division.

"We are committed to doubling our R&D investment around the five elements of New IT, Client, Edge, Cloud, Network and Intelligence by the end of fiscal year 2024, and these investments are focused across all of our business groups," Zielinski told the Global Times.