by ZHOU Mo

Lenovo expects a global shortage of DRAM and NAND chips to last through next year, as AI-driven demand strains supply and pushes prices sharply higher, chairman and CEO YANG Yuanqing said after the company reported quarterly results on Nov. 20.

The run-up has already forced Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo to delay purchases this quarter, with some brands' inventories sinking below two months — and DRAM stock in some cases to under three weeks — as they balk at price rises of about 50% from suppliers including Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix.

Yang said Lenovo's scale as the largest buyer of memory, flash and SSD components allows it to lock in most of next year's supply under long-term contracts, provided demand stays within forecasts. Analysts say Lenovo also has more pricing flexibility than Dell and HP, given its heavier mix of commercial PCs.

Lenovo beat expectations in the fiscal second quarter with revenue up 15% to RMB 146.4 billion (about US$21 billion) and adjusted net profit up 25%. The company said AI-related sales rose to 30% of total revenue, while its Intelligent Devices Group grew 12% and pushed global PC share above 25%. Lenovo expects the PC market to expand 5%–10% this year, helped by the Windows 10 phase-out and rising demand for AI PCs. IDC estimates third-quarter global shipments rose 9.4% to 75.9 million units.

The Infrastructure Solutions Group posted 24% revenue growth but remained loss-making, with operating losses narrowing to US$32 million as Lenovo increased AI-focused investment. Its services arm grew 18%, marking an 18th straight quarter of double-digit gains.

Yang said AI workloads are shifting from cloud training to inference at local data centers and the edge, and Lenovo will place greater emphasis on inference servers and related infrastructure as demand evolves.