Lenovo becomes world’s third-largest smartphone maker

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lenovo Group is the new third wheel in the smartphone market virtually dominated by the duopoly of Apple and Samsung Electronics, the Wall Street Journal says.

The Chinese PC maker, which has been selling smartphones outside of China since 2012, became the world’s third-largest smartphone maker by shipments in the third quarter, overtaking South Korea’s LG Electronics, according to data from Gartner released Thursday, Nov 14.

Lenovo overtook Hewlett- Packard Co. as the world’s biggest PC maker earlier this year.

Lenovo, which earlier this year launched its high-end K900 smartphone, saw its shipments jump 84.5% from a year earlier to 12.9 million units in the three months ended Sept. 30, giving it a market share of 5.1%, up from 4.1% a year earlier. In overall mobile phones, Lenovo also moved up in the rankings to No. 7.

Earlier this month, Lenovo reported that its profit in the latest quarter jumped 36% from a year earlier to $219.7 million. The company’s gains come from its strength in China, the world’s largest smartphone market. But competition is fierce thanks to a few unknown players vying for consumers.

“Lenovo continues to rely heavily on its home market, which represents more than 95% of its overall mobile phone sales. This could limit its growth after 2014 when the Chinese market is expected to decelerate,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner.

While Lenovo sells a range of smartphones at various price points, overall average selling prices are edging lower as companies like Xiaomi Inc. and Yulong, also known as Coolpad, muscle in with high-spec phones at half the price of iPhones and Galaxy phones. In China, Lenovo ranks second in terms of smartphone shipments with 13% of the market, behind Samsung’s 21% share, according to Canalys.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s global market share in smartphones was unchanged in the quarter, Gartner said, but it widened its lead over Apple following the launch of its newest smartphone, the Galaxy Note 3.

Gartner said Samsung shipped 80.4 million smartphones in the quarter, giving it a market share of 32.1% in the third quarter. Apple sold 30.3 million smartphones, but its share of the market fell to 12.1% from 14.3%.

“While the arrival of the new iPhones 5S and 5C had a positive impact on overall sales, such impact could have been greater had they (Apple) not started shipping late in the quarter. While we saw some inventory built up for the iPhone 5C, there was good demand for iPhone 5S with stock out in many markets,” Mr. Gupta said.

LG, which launched its LG G Flex phone last month, sold 12.1 million smartphones in the third quarter, giving it a market share of 4.8%, up from 4.1% a year earlier.