LENOVO Group Ltd's net profit jumped 34 percent in the last fiscal year ended in March, making it the only one of the world's top-five personal computer vendors to avoid a decline in the global PC industry, China's biggest PC maker said yesterday.

A rise in market share and booming smartphone sales propelled Lenovo's net profit to US$635 million, beating analysts' estimates of US$618 million. In contrast, Hewlett-Packard and Dell saw a slowdown in their net profit.

Meanwhile, Lenovo, the world's No. 2 PC maker, generated a revenue of US$33.9 billion, up 15 percent.

"Despite a challenging macro-economic environment and an ongoing PC industry transformation, Lenovo is not only the fastest growing among all major PC players, with a record market share, revenue and profitability, (but) more importantly, our smartphone and tablet business saw dramatic growth," Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

In the January-March quarter, global PC sales shed 14 percent year on year, according to International Data Corp, a US-based IT research firm.

At the end of March, Lenovo's PC market share rose to 15.3 percent from 13.2 percent a year earlier. In the same period, it narrowed the gap with market leader HP whose share fell to 15.7 percent from 17.7 percent, according to IDC.

Lenovo's US market share was nearly 9 percent, a new record in the firm's history. Its market share in China, the world's No. 1 PC market, rose to 35 percent.

Lenovo's full-year smartphone sales jumped 3.6 times, ranking it No. 2 in the domestic market behind Samsung.