Lenovo's PC business to return to positive growth this year: CEO

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Lenovo Group Ltd's personal computer (PC) business will return to positive growth in its fiscal 2017/18 year, the firm's chief executive Yang Yuanqing told Reuters on Thursday, after a drop in shipments last year. Yang, in an interview on the sidelines of a Lenovo artificial intelligence (AI) event in Shanghai, said that the wider PC market was also expected to see "stable" growth. Lenovo, which vies with HP as the world's largest PC maker, saw a return to profit in the year to March, but has seen losses in its smartphone business mount amid rising component costs and swelling marketing spend for new products. The firm's PC shipments for the fiscal year to March 31, dropped 1 percent year-on-year to 55.7 million units, though it bettered a wider market decline of 3 percent, Lenovo said in its full-year filing in May. Yang added the firm would look to focus on growing its troubled mobile phone business in developed markets such as the United States and Europe. He added that talks with Japan's Fujitsu Ltd to integrate the firms' personal computer businesses were ongoing and he hoped for progress in the near future. Fujitsu President Tatsuya Tanaka said in June he expected to reach an agreement on the matter "soon". The firms originally had aimed to finalize an agreement by the end of March. (Reporting by Lin Qi and Adam Jourdan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)