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(Reuters) - Demand for personal computers slowed slightly at the end of the September quarter, with a clear slowdown seen in western Europe, said a senior executive at Lenovo Group Ltd, the world's fourth biggest PC maker.
"Demand has recovered, but it was a little bit softer towards the end of the quarter," Milko van Duijl, chief of Lenovo's operations in mature markets, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Van Duijl said there was a particular slowdown in demand from consumers and small-to-medium sized corporations in western Europe towards the end of the quarter.
"Demand seems to be a little bit on a holding pattern," he said.
Industry data released last week also indicated a slower than expected growth in global sales of personal computers in the third quarter, with researchers pointing to weak consumer spending in the United States.
"The back-to-school cycle was weaker than anyone expected," van Duijl said.
He also repeated that it was Lenovo's aim to overtake larger rivals -- Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Dell -- to become the world's largest PC maker.
He said he expected cheaper notebooks to continue weighing on sales of smaller netbooks -- a hot trend in the PC industry since tablets started to gain ground this year.
"I think netbooks will erode and go away very fast," he said.
LEPAD DELAYED TO 2011
Lenovo is joining its rivals and handset vendors chasing after the success of Apple Inc's iPad, with its tablet going on sale in China early next year and in mature markets around May 2011, when a new version of Google's Android operating software is released, van Duijl said.
Last month Lenovo's chief operating officer told Reuters the tablet would be launched in China this year.
"We will take it to mature markets when Google Gingerbread is out, slightly later in the year. Probably May next year but it depends on the software,"
Gingerbread is the production name for the next version of Android software. The current version, Android 2.2 or Froyo, has just started to ship on devices.
"Froyo's screen size was too small," van Dujil said.
Lenovo plans to sell the tablet -- dubbed internally LePad -- along with a "hybrid" option that comes with a separate keyboard.
Competition in the tablet PC market is heating up and global handset vendors and PC makers including Nokia, LG Electronics and Hewlett-Packard have all been plotting to compete with Apple.
