14 DAY TRIAL // Lenovo is facing some tough times in China, where competitors like Huawei, Xiaomi, LeTV or Meizu are chewing away at its business. Seeing this, Lenovo is now willing to take some new measures, in order to ensure that it manages to stay in the game.
According to a recent report coming out of Asian publication Digi Times, Lenovo is looking to go into OEM business and to start manufacturing its own smartphone products. After seeing a loss of $282 / €250 million in the second quarter of 2015, Lenovo has devised a restructuring plan for its handset business, which will be applied soon enough.
The increased competition from rivals and the overlay in production between Lenovo and Motorola have apparently both contributed to the big loss experienced by the former’s mobile unit.
Lenovo will become a new OEM
Not taking into consideration Motorola’s own shipments, smartphones sales for Lenovo have been declining as of late. Still, Lenovo’s entry in the OEM handset business is expected to impact the local Chinese OEM ecosystem and its production partners, including Compal Electronics and FIH Mobile.
Recently, Lenovo was present at the IFA 2015 tradeshow in Berlin, where it unveiled a host of atypical products. For example, the company rolled out the Phab and Phab Plus phablets, which come with 7-inch and 6.8-inch displays, respectively.
Furthermore, we also saw the Vibe S1, which is the world’s first dual selfie handset. The device features an 8MP front-facing camera that should take great selfies, which is complemented by a 2MP secondary frontal camera that can analyze depth of field info to replicate human binocular vision.
Lenovo also rolled out the Vibe P1 and P1m Android phones, which arrive with huge batteries. The Vibe P1 features a 5,000 mAh battery on the inside, while the P1m drains energy from a slighter smaller 4,000 mAh battery with quick charge function that allows users to get a quick power boost while they are on the move.
The Chinese tech giant has some tablets up its sleeve too, including the Yoga Tab 3 Pro and the Yoga Tab 3 8-inch and Yoga Tab 3 10-inch Android tablets. It remains to be seen whether these new products will help Lenovo get back on track.