Lenovo leaders have said that there are three types of demands for AI service among enterprise customers.
On its most recent earnings call, Ken Wong, Lenovo's EVP & President of Solutions & Services Group, described the question of how enterprise demand for AI is evolving as "one of the most popular discussions with our customers on a worldwide basis".
He went on to set out three demand categories:
1) IT transformation: Half of Lenovo customers are looking to use AI to improve their IT infrastructure.
2) Data modernisation: Wong said "everyone knows" that getting data right is a critical part of delivering AI use cases.
3) AI consultancy: When organisations have modernised infrastructure and reached data management maturity, they seek help with implementing AI use cases, scaling production and environment and other challenges.
"We still see a very strong demand from our customers with regard to how to use AI to supercharge their business," Wong added .
The Lenovo leader also explained how AI can help with marketing. He said that his firm worked with "a leading technology customer on a worldwide basis" and leveraged GenAI to deliver a campaign in "one to two weeks."
"We were able to help them significantly reduce their time to market for their campaign, leveraging GenAI and AI technology and [delivering] a significant saving in cost," Wong added.
A new era for personal computers?
On the earnings call, Lenovo bosses also predicted that the PC market was about to enter a new refresh cycle "driven by AI PCs," which will "gradually grow to represent more than 50% of the PC industry landscape by 2027."
"Over the next three years, the global IT services market is expected to grow steadily and AI services will grow almost twice as fast as the market in general to become the primary driver," said Jenny Lai, VP of Investor Relations.
She also said that public AI alone "cannot address the increasing needs of either individuals or enterprises".
"Hybrid AI, which is formed by personal AI enterprise AI, together with public AI is indeed the way forward," Lai added. "As the outlook becomes more evident, major ecosystem players are accelerating the development and the application of personal AI agents and enterprise AI agents is creating enormous growth opportunities across devices, infrastructure, solutions and services."
Lenovo has "built a full stack AI portfolio and capability" featuring its AI PC, servers that "support all major architectures" and "rich AI native and AI embedded solutions and services", increasing its R&D investment during the last quarter.
Last quarter, Lenovo achieved year-on-year revenue growth of 20%. Its net income increased by 65% year-on-year to $350 million.
In its Q4 and full-year results for the fiscal year of 2023/24, Lenovo "reported year-on-year revenue growth across all business groups". When announcing those results in May, the firm said AI PCs would grow from its current premium position to mainstream over the next three years, echoing its recent statements about a new refresh cycle.
In a statement, it said these PCs would be "equipped with a personal AI agent based on natural interactions, heterogeneous computing, personal knowledge base, connected to an open AI application ecosystem, and with privacy and security protection".
