This was rumored last week, but now it looks like there is a bit more clarification here about what Lenovo’s plans are for the future of their mobile division, specifically smartphones. According to a report coming out of China, all of Lenovo’s future smartphones are going to be “Moto” branded. Which means there will be no more Lenovo Vibe smartphones, they will all be Moto something or another. It’s still unclear if that means we’ll see a Moto Vibe smartphone, or if Moto will stick with the current models like the Moto G, Moto Z and so on.
Branding isn’t all that is changing over at Lenovo. The company is also said to be moving their executives around. Xudong Chen was the co-president and SVP of Lenovo’s Mobile Business Group in China, now Gina Qiao will take that role. She was formerly the SVP of human resources. A bit odd to go from human resources to SVP of their mobile business, but Qiao actually held a position as Lenovo’s chief strategy officer, and also had a position as head of marketing.
One thing is clear from this report, and that is the fact that Lenovo is looking to finally leverage their purchase of Motorola from 2014. Lenovo originally bought the company to strengthen their mobile division, as they believe mobile is the future and they are right about that, but to also bring their devices into markets that they aren’t already in – namely the US. So far they haven’t done that, even though the Lenovo PHAB 2 Pro is in the US, as is the Lenovo Yoga Book (although that’s more of a laptop running Android, than anything else). Additionally, the “Moto” name definitely has a bigger and better reputation behind it, than Lenovo does, at least in the world of smartphones.
Remember that this is indeed a report, and nothing is official just yet. So take everything here with a grain of salt for now. But it wouldn’t be surprising to see Lenovo launch a slew of smartphones at CES in January, that are using the Moto name and not Lenovo.