Dive Brief:
- Lenovo rolled out changes to its partner program Thursday, streamlining its tiering structure, upgrading its channel portal and adding a services-based track to incentivize outcomes over pure sales. The PC maker expanded its managed service provider channel to Europe, Australia, Brazil and Mexico, according to the Thursday announcement.
- In its first major partner program upgrade since 2024, the company deployed a partner development framework called Lenovo 360 Elevate to help firms advance from the entry-level Authorized tier up to Gold and Platinum levels. In the prior program revamp, Lenovo created pathways for AI, data management and education, as well as MSPs and global systems integrators.
- Lenovo will also establish a support community for partners, the company said. “The channel is central to how we do business,” said Pascal Bourguet, chief sales strategy and channels officer at Lenovo, said in the announcement. “From services-led growth to new technical communities and streamlined tiering, we’re focused on giving partners clear pathways to expand their capabilities, drive profitability, and deliver greater value to their customers.”
Dive Insight:
Lenovo’s channel changes come at a tense time in the PC industry. Beset by sharply rising memory and storage chip costs triggered by global shortages, manufacturers have increased unit prices, shortened contract lengths and stockpiled components.
After a fourth-quarter surge that helped drive PC shipments up by 9.1% year over year to more than 270 million units in 2025, analysts expect a downturn. Gartner forecasted a decline of more than 10% compared to last year, with dynamic random-access memory and solid-state drive prices more than doubling over the coming months.
“This is the steepest contraction in device shipments witnessed in over a decade,” Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner, said in a February report. “Device vendors and channels face a critical window in the first half of 2026 to optimize pricing and protect margins before component inflation compresses profitability from the second quarter onwards.”
Lenovo, which commands more than one-quarter of the global PC market and is the largest player in the space, was cautiously optimistic about its ability to ride out the shortages.
“We actually effectively mitigated the impact through a lot of approaches — broad sourcing capability, diversified sourcing strategy, flexible and resilient supply chain and long-standing trusted relationship with suppliers to ensure consistent component supply at a competitive cost,” Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo chairman and CEO, said during the company’s Q3 2026 earnings call in February.
Higher material costs will likely dampen PC demand, Yang acknowledged, but higher pricing and a market shift to AI-enabled units will help protect revenues.
“Our channel inventory is very healthy and our sellout is very strong,” Luca Rossi, EVP and president of Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group, said during the call. “This situation is not new to Lenovo. We have demonstrated many times that we are able to navigate challenging environments.”
Most of the Lenovo 360 partner program changes are effective immediately. The company will activate its Lenovo 360 for Services track on April 13, per the announcement.
