Bendy Lenovo phones that wrap around wrists could be reality in 5 years

Bendable smartphones could be a reality in five years, Lenovo's head of mobile said, after the Chinese technology firm recently showed off a flexible device that can wrap around a user's wrist.

Last month, Lenovo unveiled a concept product called the CPlus, which has a 4.26-inch flexible display and runs Google's Android mobile operating system. While the product is not currently on sale and may never see the light of day, if Lenovo does decide to commercialise the product, it could do so within five years.

"We will discover a whole new suite of opportunities with flexible displays," Aymar de Lencquesaing, co-president of Lenovo's mobile business group, said at the Viva Technology conference in Paris.

"It's hard to put an exact time frame on it. I think this is a product that could come to market in the next five years...the next couple is a bit aggressive, in particular because the equation of technology, novelty and price point. So you have to have a product that you can deliver the market that makes it a good value proposition."

Lenovo has been experimenting with new features on smartphones in an overall market which is slowing, as device makers look to differentiate their products from rivals. The Chinese firm recently unveiled an augmented reality smartphone. Samsung is also reportedly working on bendable phones which could be released in 2017, according to Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources.

It comes as Lenovo - which also owns Motorola - faces intense competition from younger Chinese upstarts such as OPPO and Vivo. Lenovo, which was in the top five list of vendors by market share at the end of last year, got knocked out by these new rivals, according to research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

The company is now trying hard to ramp up its market share to compete with the likes of Samsung, Apple and Huawei - the three biggest smartphone players.