Lenovo can shore up demand for its products if it can develop its own smartphone and have it work with its computers in unique ways - much like Apple had done, technology analyst Jeff Kagan said.
Kagan was reacting to a report that Lenovo Group, the second largest smartphone vendor in China following Samsung, wants to start selling handsets in the US market within the next year.
“Lenovo seems to be hitting on all cylinders right now so I see this move into smartphones as making sense. This is an opportunity that many other similar companies simply don’t have,” said Kagan.
However, he noted that raises the question of whether the lack of awareness of the Lenovo brand name in the US smartphone market – a different story from Apple -- will be a problem.
So far Lenovo has been successful with it smartphone launch in China and the company wants to see if it can replicate its achievements with the Thinkpad brand it acquired from IBM.
“If they can hit this right, this is an enormous opportunity for Lenovo to not only build the smartphone business, but to solidify the computer business at the same time,” said Kagan. “All they really need to do is follow the Apple model at this early stage.”