In a recent announcement from Chen Xudong – the newly appointed chief of Lenovo's mobile business group and Motorola's chairman – Lenovo Mobile is set to be fully absorbed by Motorola, losing any autonomy.
This doesn't come as a surprise, considering Lenovo's plan to turn Motorola into the primary channel for its mobile operations. The name Lenovo is immediately associated with PCs, but it doesn't carry that same kind of weight over to the smartphone market. This consolidation hopes to change that.
Although the company's performance Q1 figures were disappointing, its newly acquired Motorola arm still did fairly well. As a result, Lenovo has placed a heavy focus on redistributing its resources.
A key factor in its recovery would be a decrease in expenditure. According to a release from the company, it plans to reduce its workforce by 3,200 employees from non-manufacturing parts of the business. This would result in an expense reduction of over $650 million in the second half of the year.
Even though it seems that Motorola might swallow up the entire mobile segment within Lenovo, the company still intends to have non-Motorola smartphones selling. These include the VIBE smartphone and the Xiaomi-inspired, Android-powered ZUK Z1, which will launch in China first, and then internationally by mid-October at a price of $280. The phone will come as collaboration between Chinese brand ZUK and a Cyanogen OS.
This may be what it takes to make Lenovo a major player in the Asian mobile markets, competing with the likes of Xiomi and Huawei.
