Although Lenovo saw poor results recently, losing $72 million in the quarter to June against a profit of $173 million for the same period in 2016, Roman told CNBC that heavy investment in "second wave" products such as smartphones and data centers had had an impact. He expects the investment to pay off later in the year.
Roman added that the proliferation of products in the technology sector will become "ten times worse in three years," and that his role as a chief marketer is to bring products and branding together in a consistent way.
"If you are a consumer looking for a phone, a tablet, a PC, a gaming device (or) VR goggles, we want your perception of Lenovo to be the same. We still have a Moto campaign (for Motorola), a Yoga (laptop) campaign (and) we want to make them similar and part of a broader consumer (-facing) campaign."
While he was open about the loss in the last quarter, Roman emphasized that the company`s "three-wave" strategy was on track. The first wave – its current PC business – saw a 7 percent increase in its average selling price.
"In a market that is going down (it) points to the fact that we have focused the mix on higher-end products, more profitable products," he said. He was also positive about the second wave – smartphones and data centers, and said third wave products would see investment, such as machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality.
"Obviously one hates not to have the profit but at the same time in terms of reaching the milestones (we set) we feel that strategy is actually happening, we maintained our guidance for the year so we see the growth."
Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.
0 comments:
Post a Comment