This evening, we have already heard from the IDC about the struggling tablet market in general and their disappointing Q4 results. That said, one of the companies which seem to buck the trend and actually saw a year-on-year growth for tablets in 2014 (compared to 2013) was Lenovo. The Chinese company were the only ones in the top 5 who managed to see positive growth year-on-year, which is impressive enough. Now, Lenovo has just released their own results for Q4 and once again, the landscape looks pretty good for the new owners of Motorola.
In the grand scale of things, Lenovo reports a quarterly revenue of $14.1 billion which is a 31% increase on the same quarter last year. As we know, they now own Motorola (and all those lovely Motorola devices) and that seems to have certainly helped Lenovo’s bottom line, as the report advises that they managed to shift more than 10 million Motorola units in the fourth quarter of 2014. Which equates to a rise of almost 118% for Motorola year-on-year. What’s more is that Motorola’s input is likely to be a significant contributor in 2015 with the recent news that Motorola has now re-entered Lenovo’s home turf, China. It was only today that we heard the news that the Moto X has already secured over one million pre-orderss in China already.
For the Mobile Business Group (MBG), the report showed that including the figures from the Motorola investment, products, Lenovo-branded tablets and so forth, sales equated to $3.4 billion. In spite of this, the MBR notes an overall loss for the quarter of $89 million. However, Lenovo were quick to point out that with Motorola’s resurgence in China (not forgetting the expectations of repeating the $1.9 billion acquired from the 10 million units shipped outside of China) that Lenovo expect to be on track to being a profitable company within the next 4-6 quarters. The report also notes the joint efforts of Lenovo and Motorola equalled an overall 6.6% market share, which was a 78% increase year-on-year. As chairman and CEO of Lenovo, Yuanqing Yang put it “This quarter, we are at the starting line of a new race, but the results show that we have the right strategy, we made the right acquisitions and we executed well globally, so I am confident we are ready to win” What do you make of Lenovo’s results? Now that they own Motorola, are they one to look out for? Let us know your thoughts.