Lenovo releases updated mobile Web products

Updated: 2011-11-30 14:34

By Tuo Yannan (China Daily)

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BEIJING - Lenovo Group Ltd, the largest Chinese PC maker by market share and second-largest globally, introduced updated Internet mobile products on Tuesday, aiming to boost its sales and newly launched cloud service.

Lenovo releases updated mobile Web products

Lenovo Group Ltd says its new smartphone and tablet PCs will provide 200 gigabytes of free cloud space for every user.[Photo/China Daily] 

In order to compete with international rivals such as Apple Inc and Dell Inc in the domestic and oversea markets, the company announced it has launched the second-generation smartphone LePhoneS2 and tablet PC LePad S2 series and has added new products such as smart TVs to its product portfolio.

"Since Lenovo became the second-largest PC maker globally (in the second quarter of this year), we have been putting greater emphasis on mobile Internet products and cloud-computing markets, both the domestic and overseas," said Yang Yuanqing, president and CEO of Lenovo.

In 2008, the company sold its mobile business to "concentrate on the PC sector", then bought it back in 2009.

Lenovo said the new smartphone and tablet PCs will for the first time provide 200 gigabytes of free cloud space for every user, a move to compete with Apple's iCloud service and other companies' private cloud services.

The new product, which allows users to synchronize and share files and data from different devices, follows other Chinese IT companies such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Baidu Inc in providing cloud services in the world's largest Internet market by user number.

The company has changed its smartphone name from "LePhone" to "ideaPhone" in overseas markets, and it plans to enter several overseas emerging markets next year.

It will launch those products in China and globally at the same time, Yang said in the press release.

After Apple introduced its new handset iPhone4S in many countries, except the Chinese mainland, several months ago, Lenovo seized the opportunity, selling more than 1 million smartphones monthly.

"We will produce various product lines to cater to different customers, unlike Apple's single-product strategy," said Liu Jun, senior vice-president of Lenovo and president of the company's Mobile Internet and Digital Home Business Group.

He also said that the company will launch its smart TV in the first quarter of 2012 to compete with Google Inc's smart TV.

According to the domestic IT research company Analysys International, China had 396 million mobile Internet users in the third quarter of this year, with a market of 21.77 billion yuan ($3.4 billion). The researcher said Lenovo's tablet PC held a 2 percent share of the Chinese market in the second quarter, while Apple held around 74.3 percent. Liu, however, said the company's tablet PC already holds about 8 percent market share in China and is expected to reach to about 20 percent by the end of the year.