WASHINGTON: Lenovo maintained its No. 4 ranking in smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter even though its worldwide shipments plunged 18.1 percent, according to new market data. Overall, worldwide smartphone shipments rose 5.7 percent from a year earlier to a new record – 399.5 million units shipped, market research firm IDC reported.
Lenovo shipped 20.2 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, down from 24.7 million a year earlier. Even so, that 18.1 percent decline marked an improvement compared to the third quarter, when its shipments fell 26.8 percent. Lenovo, the No. 1 PC maker, sells smartphones under the Lenovo and Motorola brands. It ranked behind Samsung, Apple and Huawei with a 5.1 percent worldwide market share.
Top-ranked Samsung enjoyed a 21.4 percent market share after boosting its shipments by 14 percent. Apple’s shipments rose four-tenths of a percent, giving it a 18.7 percent market share. Huawei led the major smartphone makers with a 37 percent jump in shipments. That boosted its market share to 8.1 percent.
Lenovo, which is based in China but has a headquarters in Morrisville, acquired the Motorola brand from Google in the fall of 2014. The Motorola acquisition initially vaulted Lenovo to No. 3 in smartphone shipments.
Lenovo is “still trying to find its feet amidst organizational changes while facing greater competition in its domestic market from smaller, local competitors at the low end,” IDC reported as part of its analysis of the results.
“The Motorola brand, strong in 2014 in the Americas with the Moto G and Moto X, saw fewer groundbreaking new models in 2015,” IDC also noted. Lenovo recently announced that the Motorola brand will be shortened to Moto. For the full year 2015, Lenovo ranked fourth in smartphone shipments with a 5.2 percent market share.
