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Lenovo's PC Business Surges To 15-Quarter High With AI Models Leading The Charge (nerds.xyz) 41

Posted by msmash from the gold-rush dept.
BrianFagioli writes: Lenovo is starting its fiscal year with a major win, delivering record-breaking PC sales and claiming dominance in the AI PC space. For the first quarter of its 2025/26 fiscal year, the company reported $18.8 billion in revenue, which is 22 percent higher than the same period last year. Profit came in at $505 million, more than double the figure from a year ago.

The standout performer was Lenovo's PC and smart devices division. It posted its fastest growth in 15 quarters and secured a record 24.6 percent global market share. More than 30 percent of Lenovo's PCs shipped in the quarter were AI PCs, giving it the top position in the Windows AI PC segment with a 31 percent market share. This leadership is an important talking point for Lenovo as it continues to market AI features as a key reason for buyers to upgrade.

Lenovo's PC Business Surges To 15-Quarter High With AI Models Leading The Charge More | Reply

Lenovo's PC Business Surges To 15-Quarter High With AI Models Leading The Charge

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  • Is the "AI" part actually relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @09:15AM (#65589448)

    I'm thinking that these are just computers with "AI" components jammed into them, and people are buying them because that's what's stuffed into the computers. They're not buying them for the "AI".

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by xack ( 5304745 )
      Most "AI" in computers is just an NPU that sits unused and bundled spyware "assistants". The chatbots fight over each other just like browsers fight to be the default.

      • Re:Is the "AI" part actually relevant? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @10:09AM (#65589582)
        There is a chicken-in-egg problem - which comes first, the apps or the hardware to make them runnable?

        My hearing is increasingly bad so I use live transcription on my phone more and more. On the google pixel phones, this runs locally instead of having to upload the audio to google servers. This is made possible because it uses the on-phone NPU.

        If you want you can argue that speech recognition is not AI, but having watched speech recognition remain a huge unsolved problem for decades until it was "solved" (well enough) by deep neural nets, I will disagree.

        Apple's face recognition is another example.

      • A lot of the new AI computers don't have an NPU. It's just a marketing term.

    • "Now with MMX!"

  • The quality of their PCs has been terrible for the past couple years and I'd never buy another unit from them ever again. I'd probably go for a well-built Dell instead. Looks like their competition must be doing even worse if they're still selling.

    • I'd probably go for a well-built Dell instead. Looks like their competition must be doing even worse if they're still selling.

      The most recent crop of Latitude laptops have gone to hell. They used to be solid, boring laptops that were "everything you need, nothing you don't"...but they're doing all the Macbook crap now - soldered storage, nonreplaceable batteries, going for the svelte look that prevents decent cooling so the CPUs are clocked down, the keyboards have no travel anymore so they're not all that great to type on...My company has been a Dell reseller for nearly 20 years but we're getting clients E-Series and T-Series Thi

      • I've got a few recent Thinkpads and I'm not impressed either. Went down the loo ever since Lenovo took over.

        • Uh oh. I'm typing this on my new thinkpad, after switching from Dell latitude because I wasn't impressed with how it weathered over time. (In particular the screen hinge gave out and the speakers kept fizzing out)

          Design-wise, I love the Thinkpad. I put it next to my old T400 and it's remarkably recognizable. That was one of the early Lenovo Thinkpads, and it still works.

          The new one has a good-feeling keyboard, a decent number of ports, and an external LED to show its power state. It feels sturdy, not

          • In my case of T15 I had two screen repairs within the first year. Both just died unexpectedly. I had an on-site next-business-day support package but it took them 2 weeks to fix my device. They initially refused to honour the on-site at all and tried to force me to mail it in instead.

            Then there's a permanent coil whine from the chipset, and very recently, the device started freezing entirely, not responding to anything other than a forced power off.

            Oh, also one RAM stick died after about 18 months.

      • Perhaps that should be my new name for Lenovo.

        Loo-novo

      • Re:I'm surprised (Score:5, Interesting)

        by slaker ( 53818 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @10:37AM (#65589640)

        Soldered RAM is standard for Intel's Lunar Lake lineup and for most AMD's Strix Halo APUs. I can't speak to how well Lunar Lake works but I have deployed some AMD HX 370 systems and they were absurdly nice for ~$750 mini PCs.

        I'm not defending the practice of building systems that way but it seems to be an architectural choice by the CPU manufacturers rather than a defect of particular notebook models.

        I have nothing but good things to say about the 14" T, X and P series Thinkpads I've bought and supported, even though there is a clear difference in build quality between the T61 I had 20 years ago and the P14s I have now. If nothing else, Lenovo has gradually stepped up its display game in a way IBM definitely never even considered and even without the titanium frame, it's still better made than a Precision 5490.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 )
      I imagine that a lot of their sales are through programs. Work assistance programs, educational programs, etc. The units are inexpensive and the specs are sufficient for most tasks; but I've had precisely 1 in my life (5 years ago). It bricked after 3 months; so I sent it in for warranty repair. A year after that it stopped charging. Yeah, I'll never accept one of those again.

    • Lenovo laptops either are great and remain great for many years, or pulverize within 3 months. That is my 10-year experience with Lenovo laptops (both owning and managing). Dell laptops I have much more experience with Dell and HP laptops. Dell's consumer models...are pieces of crap. Even their business model laptops aren't as good as they used to be. HP is worse.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I'd probably go for a well-built Dell instead.

      Every Dell laptop I've had mysteriously loses its ability to charge its batteries. Not a battery, charger or connector problem. It's something on the motherboard* (according to the blinky light error code). Requiring a new mother board. I'm sitting at a Dell right now which has become a glorified desktop. Because I can't unplug it anymore.

      "Why don't you just break down and buy a new laptop from us, sucker."

      *Something about a failure to 'read' the connected charger's capacity**. So it blocks the charging f

  • People who bought laptops and PCs during the 2020 lockdowns - because they realized that trying to use their iPads for everything wasn't all it was cracked up to be - are realizing that those machines are reaching the end of their life cycle. With Copilot+ PCs from Lenovo being less expensive than their "non-AI" counterparts, combined with Windows 10 reaching its EOL in a few months, it's completely unsurprising that people are buying new computers and that they're picking inexpensive ones.

    • That and sneaking 'em through before whatever silly tariffs get declared next. We had a dying fridge that could've been kept alive with some parts but decided to replace instead while the getting was good.
    • I don't think covid PC's are aging out. I have a laptop from 2020 that has an i7-1165G7 and it still hauls ass at anything i throw at it.

      Tech isn't deprecating as quickly as it used to where your then 2 year old PC could suddenly no longer run anything new.

      You can reasonably expect 10+ years of actual useful life out of a modern CPU.

      Even all of my now 10 year old thinkpads with ~6th gen intel are fine for web/Teams/Zoom/Office use.

      • Hell, I have a Covid era laptop with an AMD 3250U (2C2T) and that still does anything non-gaming, non-video-editing that I want to do on a laptop. Still plays fullscreen videos flawlessly, still surfs without apparent delay or drawback. Thankfully, improvements in javascript implementations have kept pace with all the clowns who cannot make basic webpages without scripts.

        It was $300.

        I did upgrade from 4GB to 8GB RAM and from 128GB SATA to 512GB nVME SSD. Both used, all the numbers on the RAM matches so ther

        • I've got a 2010 ear laptop (4C 8T) that still does everything non video editing non deep learning that I want to do (I've got a desktop for that).

          It wasn't $300, it was probably 2 grand in 2010! And I've upgraded from 16G to 32G RAM, and from a 250G spinning disk to a terabyte SSD.

      • You can reasonably expect 10+ years of actual useful life out of a modern CPU.

        I built my desktop PC in 2014 out of mid-range parts. It's still going strong and keeps up with everything I throw at it 11 years later.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

          [looks at my 2009 Mac Pro I bought used in 2011 for $300, still going strong]

          I have upgraded the 4 core Xeon for a 6 core, upgraded RAM to 64GB, replaced 512MB Nvidia with an 8GB AMD card, upgraded the blue tooth/wireless, replaced spinning disks with SSDs. So maybe an extra $400.

          Still, $700 for 13 years use (mostly iTunes library and photo/backup duties) isn't too bad. It takes up a lot of room and I've been looking into repurposing the case for some fun project, now that Mac Minis are affordable. Actual d

    • Only corporate laptops that require warranties are aging out that quickly, a 5 year old laptop is still pretty functional today.

    • Personally I have never had a ThinkPad reach the end of its lifecycle. I have a couple T400s that I use like servers for my own stuff and they just keep going.

  • OK, I'll ask out loud (Score:4, Insightful)

    by excelsior_gr ( 969383 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @09:32AM (#65589508)
    What on earth is an AI PC?

    • It has a shiny holographic sticker that says "AI PC", "AI ready" or some such. And a box with 20% more color than the previous iteration.

    • What on earth is an AI PC?

      Why don't you ask a search engine? It's more efficient than asking Slashdot. There will be a cached result in front of you before you can get your hand away from the enter key.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dysmal ( 3361085 )

      The laptops have a stupid ass copilot key on them.

      It's also harder and harder to find non-"AI" PC's so yes they're technically selling better but when that's all that's in stock, that's all you're going to get. Similar to how most of the cars sold are white, silver, beige, red, and black. That's what's readily available and so that's what people are buying.

      • It also has an NPU that helps run AI apps but isn't strictly necessary because your computer was already Turing complete.

        Most of the time, AI apps are just data harvesting apps with extra steps.

    • Re:OK, I'll ask out loud (Score:5, Informative)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @10:20AM (#65589608)
      A PC with a NPU that can hit 40 TOPS so it can get blessed by MS with that stupid copilot key on the keyboard. Really, that's pretty much it. Pretty much every new PC will be a "AI PC" soon, just because the hardware is becoming more and more common.

    • An ex-lease laptop I will buy in 5 to 10 years when my current ex-lease laptop has enough hardware issues and needs to be replaced.

      Hopefully by then thre's actual practical use for the extra NPU similar to offloading CPU processing to a GPU does. And a use for another inane key added to the keyboard.
      All running Devuan Linux, of course.

  • Windows 11 requirement (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Snert32 ( 10404345 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @11:06AM (#65589696)
    Of course sales are good, people with Windows 10 are scared of the end of the world in October, and they have to replace their good, working, stable computers with something new and shiny that has TPM for Windows 11. Lenovo could be selling crap (although, in fairness, their product line is not bad) with TPM and sales would still increase drastically.

  • Isn't this simply due to the Windows 10 end of support? People are finally being forced to buy new computers, even if they don't really need them.

  • More I think because Lenovo quality is much higher (Score:4, Informative)

    by ayjaym ( 5516790 ) on Thursday August 14, 2025 @01:59PM (#65590154)
    My company was recently acquired. We develop using virtualized environments on high end laptops and we're using Dell core i9 machines with 64G memory and a 12G GPU for AI work. Several machines failed within a few days due to catastrophics NVMe drive failures. Then we had cooling fan issues where the fan would run away and eventually the bearings would fail. They used a wide-screen aspect ratio screen despite no high end user wanting this, where a narrower and deeper screen would be much more useful. Our new owner uses Lenovo devices so we replaced the Dells with Thinkpads having a very similar spec. They have sensible aspect ratio screens, are smaller and lighter despite having the same 17 inch diagonal screen size, and we have had no hardware issues whatsoever. At home I have a Lenovo Legion 5 which has performed flawlessly for many years. A few years back I had a Dell machine where due to the use of incorrect bonding material, the BGA mounted GPU was guaranteed to fail after a certain number of thermal cycles. Dell never advised owners or made any attempt to compensate them, as far as I know. So it seems no wonder Lenovo devices are selling well. They're just good quality machines

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