Eugen Naidoo, General Manager of Lenovo South Africa.
Amid ongoing disruptions to the global supply chain and an increasingly challenging economic environment, Lenovo is working to maintain profitability in South Africa's highly competitive PC market.
It is exercising strict operational discipline with flexible sourcing strategies and a sharp focus on demand-driven execution.
That's according to Yugen Naidoo, general manager of Lenovo South Africa, who spoke to ITWeb on the sidelines of the Lenovo Accelerate 2026 event held in Sandton last week.
He said that while volatility in global logistics and macro-economic pressures are testing the industry, Lenovo's ability to adapt its supply chain and align product availability with change is important. Customer Demand has been central to maintaining market performance in South Africa.
Naidu also revealed that the Chinese multinational, which is the world's number one manufacturer of PCs, is also seeing huge demand. artificial intelligence (aye)-based products.
He said that the relaunch of smartphone brand Motorola in South Africa last year is beginning to have an impact. Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility from Google in 2014 for $2.9 billion.
Lenovo has recorded strong momentum in its AI-powered business, with AI-related revenue increasing 84% year-on-year to 38% of total group revenue in the fourth quarter, underscoring the rapid global shift towards AI-enabled infrastructure and devices.
Naidu said Africa has historically lagged behind in adoption, but this dynamic is rapidly changing as technology becomes more accessible and globally integrated.
He said that adopting internal AI is also speeding up the company's time to market. “We have great partnerships and I personally am using AI within the company to get products to market faster.”
While Naidoo did not disclose the South African revenue contribution from AI, he confirmed the growing demand for AI solutions in the local market, despite significant supply chain disruptions affecting the PC industry globally.
He said competition for semiconductors and memory is intensifying as data center expansion accelerates around the world, putting additional pressure on PC manufacturing.
“The supply chain has become tight due to the increasing demand for semiconductors by data centers,” he said. “Data centers are taking up the majority of DRAM memory and components that are needed for the PC market. We have been able to grow despite these challenges.”
He highlighted the rapid growth of data center infrastructure globally, including in South Africa, as a key driver of component demand.
“If you look at the big hyperscalers, there were only two data centers in South Africa about 10 years ago and now there are over a thousand,” Naidu said, pointing to the broader global boom in cloud infrastructure.
Despite these pressures, Naidu said early planning and better decision making have helped Lenovo maintain performance.
“Globally, we were able to plan early and speed up customer decision-making processes and this helped us achieve good results.”
He also pointed to the 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 there's a CPU (central processing unit) and a GPU (graphics processing unit) to run graphics on devices. But now there's something called an NPU,” Naidu said.
“With this, we're trying to reduce the amount of data going to the cloud by managing it on your local device. With Lenovo, we've got an NPU that drives local data intelligence without having to go to the cloud and come back.”
Regarding strategy, he said the company is focusing on increasing access to technology despite macroeconomic pressures.
“Our strategy is to continue to democratize IT, even though the supply chain is tight. We want to do this by opening up IT to more South Africans, not to a few consumers or enterprises.”
Naidu said that while demand for enterprise PCs remains relatively resilient, consumer markets remain under pressure due to broader cost-of-living challenges.
“In South Africa, we have been quite resilient. On the enterprise side, with respect to the PC market, we are seeing good growth commercially, but on the consumer business, it is tough. We believe the market will remain stable for the year.”
He said 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 Pepcor and Vodacom.
“I'm very excited about the journey Motorola continues to take across our ecosystem. Motorola is now our driving force in providing consumer access, from pocket to cloud.”