PC Plus: Lenovo Becomes a Force in Smartphones - and Threatens the Status Quo

Lenovo. Weren't they the ones who bought IBM's PC division and then, well, kinda dropped off the screen?

You might want to reboot that screen because Lenovo is becoming Apple and Samsung's worst nightmare: yet another Chinese company offering good quality devices at a lower price - in their home market. A market which, at the moment, is proving to be somewhat less hospitable to foreign competitors as its economy shakes out.

Lenovo is known for PCs but is actually selling more smartphones now. And it is about to acquire another American brand which has seen better days: Motorola, maker of the once iconic Razorphone. But didnt Microsoft acquire Nokia and go nowhere with it, implying that once these obsolete tech cos go down, they're done?

Well, it's always dangerous to extrapolate from a sample set of one. And if Lenovo's management of the IBM product is any indication - combined with its strategy of becoming a dominant factor in high growth developing markets like South America rather than fighting for share in mature regions like the US and Europe, it might well continue to surprise those who have written it off as another low-cost copycat. JL

Kevin Tofel reports in GigaOm:

The PC Plus market requires fast, efficient innovation as it moves quickly from premium products to mainstream ones and from mature market domination to emerging market
hyper growth
What a ride it has been for Lenovo of late. Last quarter, the company unseated HP to sell the most computers globally and on Thursday the company said it’s selling even more mobile devices helped largely by a doubling of phone sales in the last three months. Alongside the 14.5 million PCs Lenovo moved between April and June this year, it sold 15.8 million phones and 2.3 million tablets according to The New York Times.
The PC sales figure is actually down 11 percent from the year ago period but as Lenovo positions itself as what it calls a “PC plus” company, mobile device sales helped offset lost revenue from lower computer sales. Lenovo chairman and CEO, Yang Yuangqing described the company strategy this way last year:

“While driving profitable growth in our core PC business, we are rapidly transforming our company into a PC Plus company. The PC Plus market requires fast, efficient innovation as it moves quickly from premium products to mainstream ones and from mature market domination to emerging market hyper growth.  This kind of market plays to Lenovo’s proven strengths.  Lenovo is now better positioned than our competition to take advantage of these clear trends. ”

We don’t see many Lenovo smartphones here in the U.S. but the company does offer several tablets to complement its computer line. Much of the company’s sales and profits instead come from its home country of China, which isn’t a bad thing considering that much of the country’s massive population isn’t yet using smartphones or tablets. And once Lenovo closes on its $2.91 billion deal to buy Motorola, it can take advantage of that brand in other regions, such as South America, to help drive further growth. Not bad for a company that just bought IBM’s computer business in 2005.