Lenovo, recently announced the appointment of Gianfranco Lanci as senior VP and president of Lenovo EMEA.
Lanci, formerly CEO and president of Acer, will help lead the continued rapid growth of Lenovo’s business across the region, the company said. As part of the announcement, Lanci is already outlining plans to drive Lenovo to becoming a top three PC company in EMEA by 2013.
“The last year has seen turmoil and uncertainty in the PC market for a number of players, but our strategy has remained consistent throughout – to protect and grow our heritage ‘Think’ business, while attacking new markets such as the consumer space,” said Lanci, whose tenure as EMEA president officially began on April second. “We are already strong in Russia and Germany in the consumer sector and our strategy for this year is to roll out IDEA consumer products to many more countries across EMEA.”
Lenovo chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang said, “For Lenovo, we recognise we are entering a new era – the PC-plus age – in which the PC remains central to the digital lives of millions of people and business and at the heart of an ecosystem of tablets, smart phones and smart TVs. In this new era we must not only continue to win in commercial spaces, but also expand our global consumer presence in PCs and other personal technology devices. Gianfranco Lanci brings great experience, leadership and expertise to Lenovo in exactly these areas. I am certain he can help drive us forward to achieve these goals in EMEA and around the world.”
Lanci noted that the rise of tablets and movement of new form factors in PC, like thin Ultrabooks into the mainstream, creates many new opportunities for Lenovo. “EMEA is a strategically critical market for us. We must maintain our commercial leadership – we are number one in the world in commercial – while dramatically expanding our consumer and SMB presence across the region. This will help us achieve 10% share in the top 10 countries in EMEA and realise our longer term objective of becoming a top three player in EMEA,” Lanci said.
Lanci’s appointment as president of Lenovo EMEA follows the company’s reorganisation, effective April second 2012, which creates four new geographies – EMEA, APLA (Asia Pacific and Latin America), China and North America. The reorganisation will create more efficient, fast-moving and focused geographies that can implement the company’s ‘Protect and Attack’ strategy more deeply and effectively around the world, it is expected.
This strategy has so far enabled Lenovo to “protect” its core businesses in China and the global commercial space to drive profits, while investing to “attack” growth in emerging markets, consumer devices and the mobile internet, the company said. As a result of this strategy, Lenovo has been the fastest growing personal computer maker for nine consecutive quarters, out growing the wider market for 11 straight quarters. The company, which already leads its PC competitors in emerging markets, recently announced its third quarter earnings, seeing record global market share (14%), record profits, gains in virtually every region and product segment, and an exciting new suite of products the meet the need of the PC-Plus generation.
