Increased rollouts of 5G in 2020 will unlock the development of more advanced technologies, said Gianfranco Lanci, corporate president and chief operating officer at Lenovo. With potential speeds of up to 10Gbps, under ideal conditions, 5G is set to be as much as 20-times faster than 4G, Lanci said. It's the additional benefits of greater stability and lower latency though that make it an all-round win. "The reason everyone is so keen for 5G to roll out is because those combining factors mean it is the key to unlocking the development of more advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, edge computing and others." South Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States are currently leading the 5G rollout race.

PC prices are going up due to a shortage of a number of components, and the situation isn't expected to change in the coming quarters. A shortage of DRAM, SSDs, batteries, and LCDs have conspired to drive up PC prices, Gianfranco Lanci, corporate president and chief operating officer at Lenovo, said during an earnings call on Thursday. It's difficult to pin a number on the price increase because of the number of PC configurations available. The cost of purchasing these components is going up, which is triggering PC prices to also rise, said Lanci, a PC industry veteran. The shortage of components like memory will continue, Lanci said.

CCF Artificial intelligence will make the tech channel a happier place by removing much of the tedious grinding interaction that poisons relationships between vendors, distributors and partners, Lenovo's boss claimed today. Lenovo COO Gianfranco Lanci told the audience at Canalys Channels Forum that the firm was examining how to use emerging technologies to change the way it does business. "We are working on lot of things - big data and analytics, AI." "You can think about how to run the company in a different way." Pressed as to what he meant, Lanci said the organisation was already shifting to chat, away from email, although this was not always possible, with some customers wedded to fusty old email. Further ahead, he said, AI could start taking over some of the workaday, grinding tedious tasks that occupy much channel time – such as handling financing issues.