Lenovo smartphones

Lenovo smartphones are marketed as the "LePhone" in Mainland China and the "IdeaPhone" overseas. Motorola Mobility, ZUK Mobile and Medion, divisions of Lenovo, sell smartphones under their own brands. As of September 2015, Lenovo is in the process of rebranding most of its phones using the Motorola brandname.

Lenovo has implemented an aggressive strategy to replace Samsung as mainland China's top smartphone manufacturer. It spent $793.5 million in Wuhan to build a plant that can produce 30 to 40 million phones per year. Data from Analysys International shows that Lenovo's China smartphone sales experienced considerable growth in 2012. Lenovo's market share increased to 14.2 percent during 2012's third quarter, representing an increase over 4.8 percent sales growth in the same quarter of 2011. IDC analysts said that Lenovo's success is due to its "aggressive ramping-up and improvements in channel partnerships. "Analysys International analyst Wang Ying wrote, "Lenovo possesses an obvious advantage over rivals in terms of sales channels." The company's CEO, Yang Yuanqing, said, "Lenovo does not want to be the second player ... we want to be the best. Lenovo has the confidence to outperform Samsung and Apple, at least in the Chinese market."

Yang Yuanqing said that Lenovo's strategy for Lenovo devices dictates an emphasis on its home market of China and emerging markets such as Russia, Indonesia, India, and the Middle East. Lenovo planned significant product releases in those markets in 2013. Yang said Lenovo is pursuing this strategy due to its thin pre-tax profit margin of only 2.6%. He said, "If you don’t have enough scale, if you don’t have enough volume, it’s hard to make money. If you don’t have enough market share, it’s hard to make money," Yuanqing says. "That’s why we enter the markets one by one. When we enter a market, we want to quickly get double-digit market share."

The LePhone, as Lenovo smartphones were called in China, is offered at a relatively low price point and is customized for the Chinese market. The LePhone benefited from strong support from Chinese mobile carriers and content providers such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. Having seen rapid growth in China’s smartphone market, Lenovo has begun efforts to raise its share in the high-end market by cooperating with Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek in 2012 According to IHS iSuppli, Lenovo was a top-three smartphone maker in China with a 16.5 percent market share in the first quarter of 2012. According to a May 2012, report released by IDC Lenovo ranks fourth in the global tablet market by volume. In November 2012, Lenovo became the second largest seller of mobile phones in China when measured by volume.

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