Motorola smartphones to account for 40% of Lenovo’s smartphone shipments

Lenovo is expecting sales of Motorola phones to make up 40 per cent of its total smartphone shipments in the coming fiscal year beginning April 1, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the current fiscal year, the figure stood at 30 per cent of the total 85 million smartphones sold by Lenovo and Motorola.

Lenovo closed its US$2.9 billion acquisition of Motorola from Google last October and earlier this week announced that Motorola smartphones will once again be sold in China, as well as other markets.

Motorola devices will be priced at more than US$400 while Lenovo smartphones will be below that figure.

According to Strategy Analytics, Lenovo captured five per cent market share of global smartphone shipments in Q314, while Motorola captured three per cent. The combined eight per cent share put it above the current number three player Xiaomi, after Apple and Samsung.

In China, Motorola will face fierce competition, with home-grown companies like Xiaomi and Huawei expecting to ship at least 100 million smartphones in 2015.

The three new devices that Motorola announced for China — the Moto X, new Moto X Pro and the Moto G, which supports LTE — are the first to be introduced by the company in the country since 2012, after Google withdrew the vendor from the market in 2013.

All three models will go on sale early this year.