Lenovo’s PC sales have been going down consistently. Experts claim that Lenovo’s interest in unveiling smartphones in US market has come only because of dismal sales of Lenovo PCs. According to Lenovo’s CEO, Yang Yuanqing, introducing smartphones in US market will open “new opportunity” for the company to develop.
Even though China is the biggest market for just about anything on the face of the earth, it has been observed that the PC sales have considerably gone down in China and experts feel people more and more prefer to buy smartphones rather than purchasing PCs. Not only in China but also in other parts of the world, the situation is quite same.
So, it is quite inevitable for Lenovo to switch over to smartphones. However, selling Lenovo in a market that is already been taken over by the likes of Samsung and iPhone. Lenovo will have to spend quite some time in establishing itself in the US markets. Currently, Lenovo has been offering its mobile phones in only home country and nearby Asian markets like India. However, it is not going to be the same anymore. Lenovo plans to introduce smartphones in 2014.
The major hurdle that lies in the path of Lenovo to introduce smartphones in US is that it has to gain support from various cellular networks and making the phones available at affordable prices compared to Samsung and Apple which rakes in 70% of the market in US. Another thing Lenovo needs to think of is to file its patent portfolio which has been already done by other China based companies like Huawei and ZTE that have paid importance to file patent.
At the moment Lenovo is the second major smartphone manufacturer in China and offers a wide range of feature rich phones such as K900 which runs on Intel CPU. However, the market in China is being ruled by Korean based Samsung. When it comes to making a mark in US, Lenovo has to show innovativeness when it comes to hardware and features. Its future competitors like Apple and Samsung are focusing on making their phone’s software and services very intuitive in order to provide the best user experience. Lenovo has to offer unique features at affordable prices to break the market monopoly.
Since last year Lenovo has been making attempt to expand its horizon outside China. It has launched smartphones in India, Russia and Indonesia. However, it has still not yet been able to shake the market leaders in these regions. Now, it aims to move on US and Europe. The uphill battle is going to be quite challenging for Lenovo. We hope that Lenovo offers some cool feature rich phones at impressive prices.