MORRISVILLE -- PC maker Lenovo isn't about to let up now that its momentum is the envy of the industry.
The Chinese company plans to capitalize on its rapid growth - its worldwide PC shipments jumped a whopping 37 percent last year, far outpacing the overall market - by upping its investment in product innovation and marketing, saidRory Read, president and chief operating officer.
That will mean hiring additional workers locally and around the world, Read said in an interview Friday at his Morrisville office.
"We will invest in our people and add capabilities to win in the marketplace," said Read, who declined to be specific about hiring plans. Lenovo has 22,300 workers worldwide, including about 1,625 employees in Morrisville, which serves as a headquarters for the No.4 computer maker.
Read appeared to be on the verge of bouncing out of his chair as he discussed the company's recent accomplishments and prospects.
"Five quarters in a row, we've been the fastest-growing PC company on the planet," he declared. "We're now at an all-time high [with a] 10.4 percent worldwide market share." (Lenovo ranked sixth with a 5.6 percent market share in the U.S. market in the third quarter, where its sales growth also is outpacing all competitors.)
The company also made a strong showing this month at the Consumer Electronics Association's giant CES trade show.
"I thought that Lenovo had some terrific-looking products, kind of all the way from the low- to the high-end," said analyst Charles King of Pund-IT.
Despite attractive new products and sales momentum, however, Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group sees a glaring weakness: Lenovo doesn't have a smart phone or tablet device such as the iPad in the U.S. market.
"That's where the buzz is right now," said Enderle. "Lenovo clearly needs to have a presence in this expanding market of smart phones and tablets."
Some help is on the way.
Read said that the company's LePad tablet, which debuted at CES and is launching in China this quarter, will hit the U.S. market in the second half of this year. However, he's not saying when the company'sLePhone smart phone, which was introduced in China last spring, will make the leap overseas.
With both products, said Read, the company will leverage its dominance in the Chinese market, where it has a more than 30 percent share of the PC market, to achieve economies of scale that will enable it sell the devices to American consumers "at more competitive pricing."
Lenovo's current ability to operate from a position of strength is a sharp contrast to the company's situation in February 2009, when a quarterly loss of nearly $97 million triggered the elimination of 2,500 jobs and the resignation of CEO William Amelio. That was when Read was promoted to president and chief operating officer.
Read credits the company's turnaround to several factors, including the game plan assembled by CEO Yang Yuanqing, who also is based in Morrisville.
Lenovo has dubbed its strategy "Protect and Attack" - which Read likes to illustrate by adopting a boxer's stance.
The strategy calls for preserving the company's jewels: its dominance in China and the stellar reputation of its ThinkPad laptops, which have ranked first in customer satisfaction among large business customers for four consecutive quarters, according to market research firm TBR. The second half of the equation is going on the offensive in new markets.
In this country, that has translated into expanding into the consumer arena as well as appealing to small and midsized business customers. Lenovo's strength in the U.S. has been the corporate market since the company bought IBM's PC business in 2005.
To appeal to those new market segments, Lenovo now sells ThinkPads in colors other than black and has a host of products with flashy multimedia capabilities.
Such products also are helping Lenovo win more and better space on retailers' shelves, where it has lacked crucial visibility in the past, Enderle said.
The payoff: Lenovo reports that its PC shipments in the U.S. market rose 49 percent in the third quarter, the last quarter such data are available.
