Lenovo, the Chinese company that recently just bought Motorola’s handset division from Google for a cool $2.9 Billion is no stranger to the mobile market, and it’s this their newfound success that has given their accountants a lot to be pleased about when looking at the bottom line. As Reuters is reporting, the Chinese company has enjoyed a 29% rise in annual profit for the fiscal year ending March 2014. To see profits rise as much as that is no mean feat and one that Lenovo should certainly be happy about, but their competitors should start to worry, as it wasn’t PCs or laptops that gave Lenovo this boost, but smartphones.
Throughout the past fiscal year, Lenovo shipped over 50 Million smartphones – beating Sony’s 39.1 Million – which represents a 72% year-on-year growth for their mobile division. You’re probably thinking that this is because Lenovo sells lots of phones in China, home to China Mobile, the World’s largest mobile network with over 700 Million subscribers. However, Lenovo said in a statement that they’ve been experiencing growth outside of China, predominantly Europe and the Middle East. Overall, revenue for Lenovo rose 14.3% to $38.7 Billion.
This growth however, won’t last forever and the company’s recent high-profile acquisitions of Motorola for $2.9 Billion and IBM’s low-end server business for $2.3 Billion have yet to hit the company’s pocket and analysts are predicting that Lenovo will take some time to make these profitable acquisitions. Still, to see such growth in the mobile market will be good news for investors of the company, which has been best known for their ThinkPad line of laptops and computers. With the PC industry steadily seeing massive decline all over the world, it’s interesting to see the world’s largest PC manufacturer become the world’s fourth smartphone manufacturer. With the smartphone industry being dominated by Apple and Samsung, it’d certainly be nice to see someone like Lenovo break in to the market as more choice is always good for consumers, and competition is good for the industry as a whole.