Lenovo rides smartphones into post-PC era

Hewlett-Packard couldn't navigate the industry shift to mobile even with the acquisition of Palm. Dell tried the tablet game and Android for a bit to no avail. Acer and Asus ran with netbooks as everyone else sprinted to the iPad.
To date, no Windows PC player has been able to transform from a computer maker to a smartphone player. Apple is excluded, of course, since it basically invented the post-PC era with the iPad.
Enter Lenovo. The company's first-quarter results highlight a company that has used its brand in China to become a top-tier smartphone player. Lenovo's first-quarter mobile sales were 14 percent of total revenue. A year ago, mobile revenue was a blip. The story isn't that Lenovo's mobile shares have surged. The story is that Lenovo is the first PC maker that hasn't been completely blindsided by a mobile shift.
Rest assured, Lenovo is still a PC maker---52 percent of first-quarter revenue was laptop sales. The company reported first-quarter earnings of $174 million on revenue of $8.787 billion, up 10 percent from a year ago. Lenovo was powered by commercial sales and a unit surge that made the company the largest PC maker.
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