Lenovo Group’s mobile division is aiming to become profitable by December of this year, the company’s Chairman Yang Yuanqing revealed on Thursday. Despite the fact that the firm recorded a 67-percent decrease in quarterly earnings during the last period, the Chinese tech giant is cautiously optimistic about its future prospects, mostly due to the fact it’s hoping to record significant growth in overseas sales in the coming months. Yang also denied the rumor that Lenovo is considering selling its phone division in an effort to refocus its resources on other divisions like the one that’s manufacturing personal computers. While the company’s Chairman admitted he wasn’t entirely happy with the way their mobile unit has recently been performing, he reiterated how mobile devices should still be a part of Lenovo’s core business, Reuters reports.
The idea of Lenovo selling its mobile unit and reinvesting some of its resources into the personal computer segment isn’t outrageous seeing how the Beijing-based tech giant is already the largest PC maker in the world by shipments. However, Yang’s latest comments seemingly suggest such a move is out of the question for the foreseeable future. Many industry analysts saw Lenovo’s 2014 purchase of Motorola from Google like a logical move, but the smartphone market experienced some significant changes since then and isn’t growing as quickly as it used to. The company’s mobile division posted an operating loss of approximately $112 million during the final quarter of 2016 and didn’t do any better during the previous quarter, making many industry watchers skeptical about its future prospects.
While the company may be in trouble if its mobile unit doesn’t turn things around, Yang still doesn’t sound worried given how he labeled the unit’s performance as being in line with his expectations, Reuters reports. The company recently appointed Samsung’s former official Jaden Jiang to head its mobile strategy in China in an effort to do a better job at competing with its domestic rivals like Huawei and OPPO and is hoping to turn things around during the next fiscal year that’s starting in April. With that said, time will tell whether Lenovo’s optimistic approach to managing its mobile division will turn out to be the correct one.