The Beijing-based company is the world's fourth largest PC maker. It hopes the decision to make cuts will help it remain competitive.
The company's global headquarters are in Morrisville.
"As hard as this news is for all of our Lenovo employees, we believe the steps we are taking today are necessary for Lenovo to compete in today's economy, and in the long run, will help us to continue to deliver exceptionally engineered PCs to our customers worldwide," William J. Amelio, Lenovo's chief executive, said in a statement.
People who work for other tech companies in Research Triangle Park say they weren't surprised by the news.
It's unfortunate, but a lot of those bigger companies are going to have a lot of massive layoffs right now that the economy's taken a downhill turn," said worker Eric Mayer.
The company will also cut executive compensation by between 30 percent and 50 percent, including merit pay, long-term incentives and other performance-based payments this year.
Lenovo will consolidation it's Asia Pacific and China operations into a single business unit.
The company also plans to relocate its call center operations from Toronto to Morrisville.
