Gerry Smith is Lenovo's newly named president of the North America region whose aim is to see the company rise to the top position from its No. 4 spot.
Smith spoke with CNET, after being named Lenovo's president of the North America region, says people still go out to buy Lenovo PC's in comparison to other companies. Recently it has been believed that people are buying iPads and tablets rather buying a PC, but Smith says it may not be completely true, according to a report in CNET news.
"Lenovo's a little different from other companies," Smith said in the interview with CNET news. "We're still seeing strong growth and a strong premium to the market overall...And this quarter, we're seeing strong growth across all product segments."
According to a recent data report, Gartner and IDC estimated that there was about 10 percent of increase in the shipments of Lenovo PC's globally in the third quarter and Gartner said Lenovo ranked the world's biggest PC vendor putting behind HP. But IDC, considered the workstations and hence concluded HP on the number 1 position with 15.9 percent of sales while Lenovo ranked second with 15.7 percent, according to CNET. But Lenovo still ranks at the forth position behind HP, Dell and Apple.
Smith has set his target that the company reaches the number one position in the US and worldwide. He told CNET: "Being No. 4 in the U.S. is a solid position, but it's not acceptable long-term for us...We will be No. 1 in the U.S. That's absolutely a focus. I'm not going to give you a time frame, but six-and-a-half years ago, Lenovo wasn't even on the radar screen worldwide. No one thought we could do it...We're tied for No. 1 today, and we have the right trajectory compared to the other company that's No. 1. The U.S. is a similar analogy to the worldwide market but just different timing...We're going to get to No. 1 over a period of time."
Smith also highlighted the importance of improving the touch panel supply and be available to all PC vendors by June 2013. He estimated that within the coming two years Lenovo is determined to have almost 50 percent of PCs have touch-screens.
"The tough question would have been if touch was a disaster, wasn't selling, and we had all this much supply," Smith told CNET. "I view it selling well, a shortage, everyone chasing supply as a huge positive because it shows market potential and it shows a huge market opportunity."
