Lenovo makes third straight loss

Lenovo, the world's fourth largest personal computer maker, has reported a loss and says it has not seen the bottom of the economic downturn.

The Chinese company made a loss of $16m (£9.4m) between April and June, its third straight quarterly loss, compared with a profit of £110m a year ago.

The main reason was a big fall in sales, which fell to $3.5bn, down almost 20% from a year earlier.

The results were, however, better than analysts had expected.

"Lenovo showed strong progress this last quarter but we still face numerous challenges," said the company's chief executive Yang Yuanqing.

But Mr Yang said that the downturn was making trading conditions tough.

"The global economic crisis continues to significantly impact our core commercial customers. We cannot say we have seen the bottom of the global downturn," he added.

Indeed the drop in sales was largely due companies reining in their spending.

"There's little evidence of a pick-up in corporate spending, and that's the biggest worry," said Edward Yen at UBS.

By : BBC