Lenovo set to hire fresh top bod to run UK biz

Lenovo is tipped to make John Harber its next UK managing director, according to well placed industry sources.

Harber is presently veep of global sales at wearables and peripherals vendor Jawbone but has agreed to join the Chinese biz and is understood to be working out his notice at his current employer.

A change at the top of Lenovo's local organisation chart previously happened in June, when Marc Godin took on a newly set up EMEA supply chain exec role to improve logistics for the server biz after the IBM x86 unit buy.

Dave McQuarrie, veep and GM for Northern Europe (Nordics, Benelux and Baltics) was subsequently asked to add the UK country operation to his full list of responsibilities.

But Lenovo wants - and needs - a pair of hands running the show locally on a permanent basis. Harber will report to McQuarrie, we were told by those ever-so-loquacious sources.

Late last year Lenovo ran into some inventory problems. Exclusively revealed by The Channel, the company loaded up distributors with high-end stock and was forced to slash prices, by up to half in some cases, to sell them.

Levels are relatively normalised now, sources told us, but Harber and his team are expected to push hard to improve UK sales.

According to distributor figures from Context, Lenovo sales declined 11.2 per cent year-on-year in Q4 to 318,904, eclipsed by arch rival HP Inc, which grew 54.5 per cent to 492,000.

HP’s gain was largely down to bumper shipments of notebooks, particularly low-end consumer devices, the analyst told us.

So while Lenovo may be consolidating market share on the global stage, back in Blighty it still has some work ahead.

We asked Lenovo to comment and will update when they do.

Updated

Lenovo has contacted us to confirm Harber is taking on the UK boss man role. ®