Bangalore: With PC sales showing stagnated growth in the recent years PC maker Lenovo is engaging on fronts other than PC and is looking at channel partners for business growth in new areas.
According to the company, it is now looking at channel partners to focus on the data center business, which is beginning to get traction. The company’s Data Centre Group (DCG) includes servers, storage, software and services.
Lenovo announced its results for second fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2016. Revenue was USD11.2 billion, an eight percent decrease year-over-year, yet a 12 percent increase over the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2016. [Read the full story here]
“Market conditions remained challenging but we delivered solid results. Our PCs and smart devices business maintained leadership and strong profitability, our Mobile business had good quarter-to-quarter volume growth and margin improvement, and our Data Center business is actively addressing its challenges,” said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo.
As Lenovo’s solid performance came at a challenging time in the industry, with both the PC and tablet markets down, and smartphones and servers showing only modest growth, Yuanqing said this is the right time to look at the data center business – a key area from the channel perspective.
“Lenovo has a focused execution plan for this business: we are strengthening our field capabilities and channel engagement, investing in training and overhauling our sales structure to better engage with our customers,” the CEO said.
In October, Lenovo opened up a SPIFF program incentive for all network partners, which was previously reserved for its SMB partners alone. Under the Lenovo SPIFF program, authorized Lenovo Partner sales representatives can earn a high margin through selling select PC or data-center products, according to some news reports.
“This is a major investment and a major incentive and it’s a way we’re striving for line of business conversion from our PC resellers to look at servers,” said a senior executive of the company indicating that in the coming months the company will formerly announce an accreditation program and a new tiered model based on how partners are specialized.