Lenovo Shuffles Executive Deck Again, Reorganizes Some Business Groups

Lenovo is shuffling its leadership deck once again, naming Emilio Ghilardi president of Lenovo North America and Aymar de Lencquesaing as chairman and president of Motorola Mobility and co-president of the company's mobile business.

Rick Osterloh, who had headed up Motorola Mobility, has left the company, Lenovo said in a statement.

Joe Lore, sales director at Woburn, Mass.-based Lenovo partner Sunnytech, said his company saw 15 percent year-over-year growth with Lenovo last year. Still, all the movement within Lenovo's ranks has a noticeable effect.

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"They've been moving people around for the last year and a half so it doesn't surprise me anymore, but it makes it difficult for me as a reseller when I get a relationship going with an inside sales rep and all of a sudden he's gone and I have to spend time getting to know somebody new. Relationship-building gets hard -- getting the relationships and getting the right information. I think that hurts big companies in general."

The moves, effective April 1, are just the latest in a series of executive changes at Lenovo. De Lencquesaing had been named president of Lenovo North America in a management overhaul about a year ago.

Ghilardi joined the company as vice president and COO last July and oversaw the PC and enterprise businesses. Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility in late 2014, and Osterloh was part of the executive team there.

Now, de Lencquesaing will be chairman and president of Motorola Mobility, as well as co-president of Lenovo's mobile division along with Xudong Chen, who was made president of the division last June.

In a statement, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing said the departures and reassignments are intended to "accelerate our transformation into a customer-centric company.’

A Lenovo spokesman said the changes would have no impact on the company's channel program.

The executive reshuffling cements a change in Lenovo's Mobility Business Group, which previously included smartphones, tablets and smart televisions. The company has moved tablets and smart TVs to its PC Group, which it is now calling the PC and Smart Device Business Group.

Other changes include Gerry Smith taking the helm at the Data Center Group, which had been known as the Enterprise Business Group, and includes servers and storage systems.

Smith replaced Jay Parker, who resigned as senior vice president of the Enterprise Business Group in the summer to take a job as Dell's vice president and general manager of North America enterprise solutions.

Lenovo has also changed the name of its Ecosystem and Cloud Services Group to the Capital and Incubator Group. In a statement, the company said the renamed group will focus on ’developing new, innovative technologies through Lenovo spin-offs or investments in stand-alone startups while continuing to develop Lenovo’s overall cloud and big data platform.’