Having lost its leadership in world PC sales and with its server business as well as smartphone unit going through reorganizations as well as sales trouble, Lenovo has been the source of speculation from employees that layoffs were coming. They did. Now Lenovo confirms them.

“Lenovo announced a worldwide resource action end of September impacting approximately two percent of our approximately 52,000 employees globally,” Lenovo said in a statement Wednesday.

“While these actions are never easy, they are a necessary part of our continued efforts to ensure long-term, profitable growth across all of our businesses.”

The company did not break down where layoffs occurred.

The global tech giant operates one of its two headquarters in Morrisville (the other is in Beijing), and its global server operations are based in the Triangle.

“Carnage”

A page devoted to Lenovo job cuts at TheLayoff.com has read recently like a now-defunct IBM watch page that became the source for information over the years as “resource action” as Big Blue termed layoffs. Lenovo bought IBM’s Raleigh-based PC division in 2005.

“Heard from someone laid off that there were 1,000 laid off worldwide. Apparently small numbers in most places do not to attract news media. Seems to have been a lot of senior I.e. Gray hairs to lower costs,” reads one post.

“I’m getting ready to go into work, but I am dreading even the idea. I managed to survive yesterday, but many of my colleagues didn’t. Yesterday was carnage,” reads another from three weeks ago.

The job cuts come as Lenovo deals with a host of challenges, as WRAL TechWire has duly noted in recent weeks. (See links with this post.)

“Difficult actions”

A Lenovo spokesperson described the cuts as “difficult actions.”

The statement refers to Lenovo’s internal :three-wave strategy” to right the ship.

The company “strongly” believes that it  is “on the right path to profitable growth, we are taking this step now to ensure that we are as competitive and as cost-efficient as we can be, particularly with our growth businesses continuing to build momentum in the market place.

“In addition, Lenovo will continue to make adjustments in all areas of the business as part of our continued effort to manage costs, drive efficiency and support ongoing improvement in our overall financial performance. While doing so, we will continue to invest in our growth engines, including our mobile and data center businesses, and non-hardware businesses such as artificial intelligence and Big Data.”