Lenovo will struggle in US smartphone market … for a while

Lenovo has been talking up its move into the US smartphone market this week, as global PC sales continue to stagnate, but the analysts I spoke to are far from convinced that the Chinese hardware giant can repeat its success in the traditional computing space.

CEO Yang Yuanqing told the WSJ that the firm would be taking aim at the US mobile space within a year. You can’t argue that it doesn’t represent a “new opportunity” for growth, given that PC shipments are still falling in most markets around the world.

In Western Europe they declined by the biggest ever amount in the last quarter – down 20 per cent year-on-year – and even in the still healthy Chinese market they are only forecast to grow by 3-4 per cent this year.

So can the hardware behemoth, which recently became the world’s number one PC vendor, tap a user trend which is seeing more and more gravitate towards mobile devices instead of traditional notebooks and desktops?

Well, Gartner has forecast it will take the lead in its domestic market – the world’s biggest for smartphones – as early as this year, but the US would seem harder to crack.

“The only way Lenovo would have a way to even have a chance would be to have a key carrier support it by lining up one or more of their products in the portfolio. Even this way, I believe consumers will not necessarily see the brand as sexy,” Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi told me.

“Lenovo’s position in the corporate PC market might give them an opportunity in the prosumer segment especially if they brought to market an Android based device with an enterprise class security and manageability feature set. Bottom line: it’s a tough job and Lenovo would be better off capturing more of the tablet market first so that they could get one step closer to consumers.”

Canalys research director Nicole Peng was not much more optimistic of its chances in the near term, telling me China sales would continue to make up the majority of its global volume.

“The competition landscape in the US smart phone market is far more challenging for new comers, with Apple and Samsung dominating over 70 per cent share,” she added. “However to start selling smart phone in the US, more importantly to gain carrier support is strategically important for Lenovo’s overall PC+ strategy globally.”

All reasonable comments and I think they’ll be true in the short term, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lenovo up there in the top three or five US smartphone vendors in a couple of years’ time. ZTE, with all of its problems and negative publicity in the US, has already nabbed third place, according to new stats from ITG Market Research.

With a hefty R&D team and vaulting ambition, Lenovo will be hard to ignore, even if its brand image is not exactly an enticing one for smartphone users Stateside at the moment.