Lenovo Group's profit jump 23 per cent on strong mobile growth

BEIJING: Lenovo Group, the world's biggest personal computer maker, today said its net profit for the second quarter rose 23 per cent to $214 million, beating market estimates on strong growth in sales of smartphones and other mobile devices.

The Chinese technology giant said its business revenue rose 18 per cent from a year earlier to $10.4 billion in the April-June period.

During the latest quarter, Lenovo's global sales of smartphones jumped 39 per cent year-on-year to 15.8 million units, exceeding that of personal computers for the first time, Xinhua news agency reported.

In China alone, Lenovo sold 13 million units in the second quarter, making it the country's largest smartphone maker.

The Hong Kong-listed company's global market share of personal computers also jumped to a record high of nearly 20 per cent during the period, the company said.

Share prices for Lenovo fell 1.4 per cent to 11.26 HK dollars (about $1.45 $) today.

Earlier this year, Lenovo in a bid to diversify its business beyond PCs, announced a $2.91 billion deal to purchase Motorola from Google and another $2.3 billion deal to buy IBM's low-end server business.

With these acquisitions and the recovery of the personal computer market, "we see even more opportunity to keep growing rapidly," said chairman Yang Yuanqing in a statement.