Lenovo to Counter Xiaomi With New Smartphone Brand Next Year

Lenovo on Wednesday reportedly announced it will create a new mobile brand and company next year to counter the meteoric rise of Xiaomi, a three-year old company, in China.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Lenovo's new smartphone brand and company will mainly focus on selling mobile phones online and will officially open for business in April 2015. The report adds that the Lenovo smartphone brand will not be done away with, and that the Chinese manufacturer will continue to sell Lenovo-branded smartphones through local retailers and carriers.

Apart from selling phones online under the new brand, Lenovo is said (via Engadget) to be looking to market branded applications and drive consumer engagement with it.

Chinese companies have been doing especially well in the global market, with second quarter results by Strategy Analytics placing three Chinese manufacturers in the top 5.

Notably, Xiaomi has been enjoying much success in the few markets it has a presence in, enough that Strategy Analytics' second quarter report pegged the Xiaomi at the number five manufacturer in the world in terms of market share, displacing LG. An IDC report however placed Xiaomi at the number six position, with LG keeping the fifth spot.

Xiaomi has done exceedingly well in China and according to Canalys it overtook Samsung to become China's top-selling smartphone brand in the second quarter - something that would have surely galled more established Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and Lenovo.

In August, Lenovo Group had posted a 23 percent jump in its net income in the first fiscal quarter, beating estimates, as it consolidated its position in the PC market while boosting smartphone shipments. The report had also included that over the past year Lenovo has displaced South Korean giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to become the No. 1 smartphone seller in China, according to recent estimates by IDC.

According to another report in September, Lenovo took over the fourth position as world's largest smartphone vendor in Q2 2014. While the rest of the world watches, it's clear the fight is on for Chinese smartphone manufacturers.