Lenovo moves big into smartphones

CHINESE PC MAKER Lenovo is making a huge drive into mobile phones and the Internet, convinced that these markets are where it will make its fortune.

Lenovo launched three new handsets, including one with the odd sounding name 'Lephone', which is another device based on Google's Android operating system.

Reuters quoted Lenovo's chief operating office Rory Read as saying, "The market in the smartphone space is just emerging in China. It's just the beginning."

Like all the big PC vendors, expansion into the mobile Internet is a big deal as mobile phones rather than PCs are what people in emerging markets will be buying and using.

Lenovo wants 10 per cent to 20 per cent of its revenue to come from the mobile Internet, with millions of phones to be sold over the next five years and tens of millions after that.

It will be just one of the companies pushing into the sector in the next few years, competing against traditional phone makers like Nokia, RIM and of course Apple.

In particular it thinks it can do well in China as opposed to a company like RIM, which isn't so well known over there.

It hasn't completely ignored the laptop sector in its latest round of announcements, though. Lenovo also updated its budget laptop line with the ThinkPad L412 and L512, which are low-cost alternatives to its higher-priced business notebooks. µ