Senior Lenovo executive Jay Parker resigns

Jay Parker, a high-ranking Lenovo executive who often served as the company’s point man with Triangle media, has resigned.

Lenovo spokesman Ray Gorman confirmed the resignation of Parker, senior vice president of Lenovo’s enterprise business – which encompasses servers and data storage systems – but provided no details. Parker, who was based in the Triangle, was promoted to that role in March as part of a broader realignment of the company’s top management. Prior to that, he was president of North American operations.

Lenovo, the No. 1 producer of PCs, acquired a line of servers from IBM and was tied for fourth in the worldwide server market in the latest quarter, according to market research firm IDC. Lenovo is based in China but has a headquarters in Morrisville.

Gerry Smith, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the PC and enterprise business group, is filling in as acting head of the enterprise business group until Parker’s successor is named.

Parker joined Lenovo in 2007 as vice president of operations for North America. He had previously worked more than 10 years at Dell.

Earlier this month, Lenovo said it was laying off 230 white-collar workers in the Triangle, or about 7 percent of its Triangle workforce of 3,200, as part of a broader cost-cutting efforts in the wake of disappointing quarterly results.

Meanwhile, Lenovo also has named a new leader of its global smartphone unit as part of a previously announced restructuring of its mobile business group. That restructuring was triggered by erosion of the company’s share of the smartphone market and the faltering performance of Motorola brand smartphones that it acquired from Google last year.

Rick Osterloh, who previously was president of Motorola, has been tapped to lead the company’s combined global smartphone business, which includes both the Motorola and Lenovo brands. Osterloh, who joined Motorola eight years ago, was named president last year.

In his new role Osterloh will continue to report to Chen Xudong, head of the company’s mobile business group. Chen was put in charge of the mobile business group in June when the company decided to replace his predecessor, Liu Jun.

Lenovo brand smartphones aren’t sold in the U.S.

Lenovo also squelched speculation that it planned to combine the Lenovo and Motorola brand smartphones under a single banner.

“Under our new organization, we will continue to drive both Lenovo and Motorola branded smartphone growth across the world,” Lenovo said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Lenovo announced a restructuring of the mobile business group that included relying on Motorola to design, develop and manufacture smartphones. The company also said it planned “fewer, more clearly differentiated models.”

“With tough markets and results that missed expectations,” the company said in its latest statement, “Lenovo is taking broad, decisive actions to realign businesses, cut costs and return to sustainable, profitable growth.”

This story was originally published August 27, 2015 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Senior Lenovo executive Jay Parker resigns."