Lenovo set to end HP's reign as world's biggest PC maker

Lenovo Group Ltd is on track to overtake Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co as the world's biggest PC maker by sales this year, making it the first Chinese firm to grab the top spot globally in a technology sector.

The ThinkPad maker's rise highlights the advance of China's technology firms on the world stage in recent years thanks to a combination of aggressive pricing, overseas acquisitions and their taking advantage of a fastgrowing home market.

Lenovo, which became the world's No. 2 PC vendor in the third quarter of 2011, had a 14.9 per cent global market share in the April-June quarter this year, a mere 0.6 percentage point away from HP's 15.5 per cent, according to research firm IDC's data.

Analysts, however, also warn that Lenovo's rapid gains in market share have come at the expense of profit margins while the company faces slowing growth in the market for personal computers and tough rivals in tablet PC space.

Figures from industry tracker Gartner show an even narrower gap with Lenovo just 0.2 percentage point from HP. In another technology sector, China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's No. 2 maker of telecom equipment, had been expected to surpass Sweden's Ericsson in 2011 sales.

With inputs from agencies