Lenovo announces biannual mobility refresh plans

Following the acquisition of Google's Motorola Mobility unit last year, Lenovo plans to launch two new products under its mobility portfolio twice a year, and release quarterly refreshes of its e-commerce stores as a way to grow market share between the Lenovo and Motorola brands.

Dillon Ye, Lenovo rest of world sales lead, mobile business group, said there are still a lot of opportunities that the company can take advantage of between the two brands.

The Chinese company reported that currently its smartphone business is larger than its PC business, with 27 million more smartphones than PCs sold last quarter.

While it's still early stages, Ye said the company is confident that the "synergies" between the two brands will help turn Motorola into a profitable business over the next four to six quarters.

"The competition is really furious. For Lenovo, we want to leverage our in-house capability, our end to end capability to draw out a winning portfolio in a very efficient speed. Basically, we want to launch a new product twice a year.

"At the same time e-commerce is a huge opportunity. Based on the interaction with the customer, we will design an attractive portfolio targeting the online customers, so for this one we are looking at quarterly refreshments to ensure we can attract online customers," he said.

Ye outlined the strength of Motorola is in the premium range of smartphones, targeting mature markets such as Australia, New Zealand, North America, and Europe, while Lenovo has been strategically placed to provide entry-level products for emerging markets, such as India, Thailand, and Indonesia. At the same time, Ye said there are also plans to enter new markets, such as Bangladesh and Myanmar.

More specifically, Ye said the Lenovo smartphone brand will be quite focused on its "customer strategic transformation", which will stem from the company's overall digital goal. Part of this, the company will be expanding its Moto Maker customisation service, which was initially launched in the US three years ago, plus focusing on taking its e-commerce platform to more markets.

Additionally, there are plans to partner with local carriers to aggressively target users that are migrating from 3G to 4G networks, Ye said.

Disclosure: Aimee Chanthadavong travelled as a guest of Lenovo.