Lenovo in sales push for smartphones and tablets

Lenovo, the world's largest supplier of personal computers, plans to intensify smartphone and media tablet sales by launching a more aggressive sales blitz across its East Asia geographic market next year.

"We want to get 10 per cent or more share [in the smartphone and tablet businesses] in a very short time in most of the economies in this market," Koh Kong Meng, Lenovo's vice-president and general manager of its East Asia operations, told the South China Morning Post last week.

While Lenovo's tablets are distributed worldwide, its smartphones are rolled out in stages. These were set to launch next year in Singapore, Taiwan, and the rest of the emerging economies in Southeast Asia, Koh said, adding that "Vibe" and "Yoga" would be the "halo brands", respectively, for smartphones and tablets in marketing campaigns.

Lenovo overtook LG Electronics to take the No3 spot in global smartphone sales in the quarter to September. Research firm Gartner estimated the company shipped 12.9 million smartphones last quarter to seize a 5.1 per cent global market share behind industry leader Samsung Electronics and Apple.

Technology research firm IDC, meanwhile, estimated Lenovo shipped 2.3 million tablets last quarter to take a 4.8 per cent global market share behind Apple, Samsung and Asus.

Smartphones and tablets are under Lenovo's mobile internet digital home business, which includes internet-linked "smart" televisions. The business made up 15 per cent of Lenovo's US$9.8 billion in revenue in its financial second quarter to September.

In a Barclays Capital research note, lead author Kirk Yang, the firm's head of technology hardware research for Asia excluding Japan, forecast Lenovo would continue to offset weakness in the personal computer market "with strong smartphone and tablet growth".