Lenovo will launch a new tablet and smartphone during the third quarter in the Le series which has so far been launched only in China, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The Chinese PC maker did not however disclose whether the new products will be sold outside China. It did not also discuss the specifications of the new products.
Like its PC rivals, Lenovo is ramping up its efforts to grab a share of the booming tablet and smartphone markets. China has more than 900 million mobile phone users.
Lenovo launched Monday a new smartphone in China called the A60, which has a 3.5 inch touch screen and uses the Android 2.3 operating system. The device is being marketed as a low price handset, at 1,000 yuan (US$155) when bought as a pay-as-you-go phone. China Unicom, the phone’s carrier, will give out the handset free with a 96 yuan monthly-service plan.
Lenovo hopes it can succeed on its own home turf where it is already the top-selling PC vendor. The company wants to double its smartphone sales, and raise its tablet market share to 20 percent, CEO Yang Yuanqing said earlier this year during an earnings call. He did not specify a timeframe for achieving these targets.
But competition in the tablets and smartphone markets has been stiff. Apple’s iPad dominates China’s tablet market with a 74 percent share, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola rank as the three biggest smartphone sellers, while Lenovo has just a 4.2 percent share.
LePhone, an Android device that launched in May 2010, was the Chinese PC maker’s first smartphone since the company bought back its mobile business company from a group of private investors. The company launched at the end of March the LePad, its first tablet computer.
In English, the Chinese word Le means “happy.”
Lenovo announced three new tablets for the U.S. market last month, but these are not of the Le series. The PC maker has said it will sell the LePhone in other countries once it “wins” the market in China first.
