Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) plans to challenge Xiaomi Corp (小米) in the world’s largest smartphone market by focusing more on online sales after demand from Internet shoppers enabled the successful return of its Motorola brand to China.
“We’re going face to face” with Xiaomi, Lenovo mobile business group president Liu Jun (劉軍) said in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “They have the advantage that they did a very good job in the online market, but Lenovo’s advantages are hardware, supply chain, and innovation.”
The relaunch of Motorola after a two-year absence was “very successful,” Liu said.
The sales start, just before China’s main holiday season, lifted the company to second position in handsets exceeding 3,000 yuan (US$480) at online shopping site JD.com (京東), he said.
The US$2.9 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google Inc in October last year gave Lenovo an established global brand and a technology licensing agreement with Google to help boost smartphone sales. The acquisition vaulted Lenovo to third place in global smartphone shipments, helping it compete at home and abroad with other China-based smartphone makers such as Xiaomi and Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
The company sees opportunities to expand its smartphone business in territories including western Europe and Latin America, Lenovo chief operating officer Gianfranco Lanci said in a separate interview in Barcelona yesterday. The company needs to look at how to achieve double-digit market share in smartphones in western Europe, compared with a low-single-digit share now, he said.
The lower-end version of the Moto X smartphone sold out on the first day after being offered only online, Liu said. Carriers are increasingly being replaced as sales channels by retail and especially Internet sales in China, Liu said. Still, Lenovo is seeking deals with operators in Europe to sell Motorola handsets through their outlets.
The Motorola acquisition helped Lenovo boost global smartphone shipments 78 percent in the fourth quarter to 24.7 million units, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said on Jan. 29. Its market share expanded to 6.6 percent from 4.8 percent a year earlier, IDC said. Lenovo trailed only Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc in shipments, while Huawei and Xiaomi ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, according to IDC.
Next month, the company plans to start a new online brand in China called ShenQi (神器) for smartphones and other Internet-enabled devices. ShenQi is still looking for additional investors, Liu said. He declined to forecast sales via the platform.
On the second day of the annual technology fair in Spain, BlackBerry Ltd introduced a 5-inch touchscreen device in the erstwhile smartphone leader’s latest attempt to regain market share.
The Leap smartphone, which comes in white and gray, is set to cost US$275 and be sold via European carriers in April, according to the Waterloo, Ontario-based company. BlackBerry is planning another device with a sliding keyboard this year.
BlackBerry chief executive officer John Chen (程守宗) took over in late 2013, at a time when the firm’s share of the global smartphone market had fallen to less than 1 percent. He brought back the iconic physical keyboard and last year oversaw the release of two new phones, the Passport and the Classic.
Now, Chen plans to revive its smartphone business by pushing security and messaging software to all devices.
“We’re going to make sure our software technology addresses everybody’s phones and everybody’s endpoint,” Chen said in Barcelona. Chen aims to get BlackBerry programs on connected cars, non-BlackBerry phones and wearable devices to boost the company’s transition from a slumping phonemaker to a more profitable software company.
In related news, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday with smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) to bolster their bilateral partnership on fourth-generation (4G) mobile network development.
The agreement was inked by Chunghwa Telecom chairman Rick Tsai (蔡力行) and HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) at the Barcelona event. It is the fifth annual strategic partnership agreement between the two companies, which covers “improvements in 4G mobile experience,” “differentiation in products and services,” “integration of distribution networks” and “promotion of digital convergence,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Additional reporting by CNA
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained