Lenovo Group Ltd’s Yang Yuanqing asked for patience as he tries to get China’s top PC maker growing once more, but for the first time publicly vowed to step down as chairman and chief executive if he doesn’t deliver on a critical sales goal.
Yang, who helped grow Lenovo into the world’s largest PC maker but also orchestrated the acquisitions of Motorola and IBM’s low-end server business, is now betting big on artificial intelligence. He wants to plough US$1bil (RM4.28bil) over the next three to four years into research, joining a race with much larger rivals Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd to crank out the next generation of intelligent, user-aware devices.