Today I have come across several news articles that reveal that tech company Lenovo plans to move in on the U.S. market to offer their brand of smartphones. While Lenovo is mostly known for its person computers in the U.S., they are the second most popular phone company in China, right below Samsung (who also happens to be the top contender in the U.S. as well). While most of us wait for the next Samsung, HTC, Nexus, or Apple device, is there any room left for Lenovo to squeeze in there?
I wrote an article a few months ago regarding the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900, which we saw displayed during CES 2013. The device has a stunning build quality and is made out of stainless steel and Gorilla Glass 2. It sounds almost like a kitchen appliance with that description, but just by looking at the device I would place the look of it even over the HTC One, which I am very fond of. It runs on a 2 GHz dual-core Intel Atom processor, has 2 GB of RAM, and sports a 13-megapixel rear shooter and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. Interestingly, the device outperforms the Galaxy Note II, which runs on a 1.6 GHz Exynos 4412 processor.
The Lenovo K900 is the device that made me wish that we had Lenovo phones here in the States – but now that my wish seems to be coming true I can’t help but wonder if customer loyalty to the phones and manufacturers that we already have will get in the way of a successful launch in the U.S.
Despite all the hype that we as tech bloggers give to phones like the Galaxy S whatever, the HTC whatever, the iPhone whatever, and the Nokia Lumia whatever, there are a few other manufacturers that can give a lot of oomph to a phone if you venture outside the box. You’ve got LG, Sony, and dare I say it Motorola (who may not be as relevant today as it was a few years ago, but at one point they were right up there with everyone else). There’s already a competitive market out there and getting a late start never helped anybody.
Although my concern for Lenovo’s success is moderately high, I also think that they might have the spark that could make it the next big thing here in the U.S. They’ve got the specs, they’ve got the look – heck, they even seem to have the whole marketing thing down. Have you guys seen the commercial for the IdeaPhone K900? If you haven’t, you should check it out.
Seriously, I don’t even know what the backstory on that commercial is but that guy looks like he’s about to get into some serious business, and he’s taking this wicked hard core beast of a phone with him. I mean yeah, maybe after the fact you’re like, “What does any of this have to do with the actual phone?” but in retrospect, the Lenovo commercial at least told you more about the phone than any of Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 prelude commercials. I’m glad that eager little boy got to take one little peek at the Galaxy S 4 but I kind of wanted to see what it looked like too if it’s all the same to you.
I would love to see a new manufacturer step in and show us what they’ve got. You can’t go wrong with more options (unless all of the ‘options’ are coming from one company – not naming any names, Samsung) and hopefully Lenovo can bring us a fresh perspective of Android, or whatever other platform they decide they might want to pursue. I just know that I’m open to all options at this point, because as fun as it is to talk about the phones we have on the market today, there’s only so much you can say about TouchWiz and iOS and the like before it all starts to sound repetitive, and sometimes you just need to divert your attention elsewhere for a while.
And I would like to divert my attention to Lenovo, so I hope that they’re able to pull of something great when they decide to show us what they’ve got.
Readers, what’s your opinion on Lenovo? Do you have high hopes for them or do you think it’s too late for them to progress very far in the U.S. smartphone market? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below!
Images via The Verge, Lenovo
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