Amid ongoing global supply chain disruptions and a persistently challenging economic environment, Lenovo is working to sustain profitability in South Africa’s highly-competitive PC market.
It is exercising tighter operational discipline, with resilient sourcing strategies and a sharpened focus on demand-driven execution.
This is according to Yugen Naidoo, Lenovo general manager for South Africa, who spoke to ITWeb on the sidelines of the Lenovo Accelerate 2026 event, held in Sandton last week.
He noted that while volatility in global logistics and macro-economic pressures continue to test the industry, Lenovo’s ability to adapt its supply chain and align product availability with shifting customer demand has been central to maintaining market performance in South Africa.
Naidoo also revealed that the Chinese multinational, which is the world’s number one manufacturer of PCs, is also witnessing a huge demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-based products.
He added that the relaunch of smartphone brand Motorola in South Africa last year is beginning to bear fruit. Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility from Google in 2014 for $2.9 billion.
Lenovo reported strong momentum in its AI-driven business, with AI-related revenue growing 84% year-on-year to account for 38% of total group revenue in Q4, underscoring the rapid global shift toward AI-enabled infrastructure and devices.
Changing dynamics
Naidoo said Africa’s adoption curve has historically lagged, but that dynamic is changing quickly as technology becomes more accessible and globally integrated.
He added that internal AI adoption is also accelerating the company’s go-to-market speed. “We have great partnerships and we are personally using AI within the company to drive faster product to market.”
While Naidoo did not disclose the South African revenue contribution from AI, he confirmed rising demand for AI solutions in the local market, despite significant supply chain constraints affecting the PC industry globally.
He noted that competition for semiconductors and memory is intensifying as data centre expansion accelerates worldwide, placing additional pressure on PC manufacturing.
“The supply chain has been difficult, with the increased demand for semiconductors by data centres,” he said. “The data centres are taking most of the DRAM memory and components that are required for the PC market. We have been able to grow despite these challenges.”
He highlighted the rapid growth of data centre infrastructure globally, including in South Africa, as a key driver of component demand.
“If you look at the big hyperscalers, in South Africa there were about only two data centres about 10 years ago and now there is over a thousand,” Naidoo said, pointing to the broader global surge in cloud infrastructure.
Despite these pressures, Naidoo said early planning and improved decision-making have helped Lenovo maintain performance.
“Globally, we were able to plan early and drive faster customer decision-making processes and this helped us achieve great results.”
He also pointed to growing interest in AI-powered PCs in the South African market, driven by new chip architectures that include neural processing units (NPUs).
“What makes a PC an AI product is that we all know that there is a CPU [central processing unit] and there is a GPU [graphics processing unit] to drive graphics on devices. But there is something called NPU now,” Naidoo explained.
“With this, we are trying to reduce the amount of data going to the cloud by managing it on your local device. With Lenovo, we have got an NPU that drives local data intelligence without having to go into the cloud and coming back.”
IT democratisation
On strategy, he said the company remains focused on broadening access to technology despite macro-economic pressures.
“Our strategy is to continue to democratise IT although the supply chain is tough. We want to do this by opening up IT to more South Africans, not a few consumers or enterprises.”
Naidoo noted that while enterprise PC demand remains relatively resilient, consumer markets are under pressure due to broader cost-of-living challenges.
“In South Africa, we have been quite resilient. On the enterprise side, in regards to the PC market, we are seeing a nice uptake commercially but on the consumer business, it’s tough. We believe that the market will be flattish for the year.”
He added that Motorola, part of Lenovo’s ecosystem, has shown strong local performance since its relaunch, recording double-digit growth and surpassing 100 000 activations in South Africa, supported by partnerships with Pepkor and Vodacom.
“I am very excited about the journey of Motorola, which completes our ecosystem. From pocket to cloud, Motorola is now our driving factor for giving access to the consumer.”
Share
