Lenovo looking to expand their smartphone brand to the US within a year!

   Lenovo are already a huge company inside China and Asia more generally and they seem to sell a fair few laptops in the UK too. Today though the news is about their smartphone division: an area which the guys are looking to grow in the coming years. A key part of that is expansion and according to the Wall Street Journal Lenovo's CEO, Yang Yuanqing, has said he wants his phones in the US within the year!

   Yang said that: "Smartphones are our new opportunity... [and] As a public company you always have to consider how to grow." The main issue which Lenovo will be facing is the stiff competition and the relatively small amount of brand awareness which the company has in the US. The company is well known in Asia and they're growing their presence in Europe, but the US is a different kettle of fish, as Nokia have been finding lately!

   The issue is, as Yang said, that the smartphone market "is more like the fashion industry," and Apple and Samsung are currently the 'in' brands and this is something which Yang hopes to overcome through marketing, something he wants to strengthen as the phones arrive.

   What do you think? Would you be interested in a Lenovo phone like the K900? Let us know in the comments below!
WSJ Via TheVerge.

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Huawei give up on the US market after numerous set backs! [UPDATE: Eric Xu was misquoted: Was actually talking about areas for telecoms growth]

   You might have heard that lately that Huawei are getting a really tough time over in the US because of a lot of accusations which have so far been unsubstantiated, but the politics behind it is a huge debate that we're not really going to enter into. The one thing that you need to know though is that because the US scrutiny of Chinese network infrastructure providers has become so intense Huawei have announced that they are going to give up on the US market entirely.

   In an interview with the Financial Times Huawei's Vice President, Eric Xu, confirmed that his company was "not interested in the US market anymore" despite their years of effort and money which have been invested in a bid to secure custom from US businesses!

   Huawei is currently the world's second largest manufacturer of telecoms equipment, but they have recalibrated their projected growth and subsequently their sales figures now their US operations are over. That means that Huawei now expect revenue to hit to $10 billion by 2017 instead of the $15 billion they hoped for by the same year before they were effectively forced to concede the market.

   We're not sure what this means for Huawei phones in the US, we would assume that they will be unaffected by the telecoms equipment division, but we're not in a position to confirm that. In the meantime let us know what you think about Huawei's new mid-range A199 smartphone, the details of which you can find here!
Via Engadget.

[UPDATE]

   According to the Beijing News (web translated) Huawei's Eric Xu was misquoted by the internet yesterday and the company are not actually leaving the US market. Instead, Huawei said that Xu was discussing the new markets which they can tap into in future and they were clarifying that the company will have great difficulty growing in the US, but they did not explicitly rule out the possibility.

   Again we expect Huawei phones will continue to ship to the US as this is one part of the business which Huawei can target at and grow in the US.
Via PhoneArena.

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04/10/2012

Nokia continues their verbal war. Says their offering is 'a step above'.

   Today Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, has refuted claims that HTC has eked out an advantage in the Windows Phone market by securing the deal with Microsoft for the 'signature Windows Phone' brand on their new handsets.

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