Lenovo rolling Motorola back into China market

Nation's tech giant hopes acquisition of US brand can help it take on global strategy

Liu Jun (left), senior vice-president of Lenovo Group Ltd and Rick Osterloh, president of Motorola Mobility, share a cheerful moment during a news conference in Beijing announcing Motorola cell phones' formal return to the Chinese market. [Provided to China Daily]

Lenovo Group Ltd is making cautious yet steady steps to bring Motorola Mobility back to China, the world's largest smartphone market by shipments.

Eight weeks after Motorola showed off its new smartphones to Chinese buyers, the firm, one of the most time-honored mobile phone makers, has already received more than 2 million orders.

"I am very optimistic about Motorola's China performance in the future," Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo, told China Daily.

"Bringing Motorola back to China is just our first step to make this brand glorious again."

Like many middle-aged people in the country, Yang, who turns 51 this year, was deeply connected to the Motorola brand. His first featured phone－back in the 1990s－was made by Motorola. Back then, the Chicago-based telecom equipment manufacturer was of the first to sell pagers in China. It also dominated the country's mobile phone market in the early stages.

To some extent, Lenovo's bold $2.9 billion acquisition of Motorola from search giant Google Inc last year was a dream come true for Yang and his team of executives.

"My first phone was also a Motorola," said Liu Jun, senior vice-president of Lenovo, who heads the company's mobile business. "Many people from my generation still carry a strong bond with Motorola, the bond started when pagers were popular."

Falling out of grace in the smartphone era, Motorola quit selling phones in China more than a year ago after it was bought by Google Inc. However, purchasing Motorola and reviving the brand in China makes perfect sense for Beijing-based Lenovo in terms of company strategy.

Although no longer at the center of the global smartphone market, similar to the equally embattled Blackberry, Motorola still has a sizeable following among high-end customers in the United States and Western Europe, where Lenovo is eager to edge in.

Lenovo's adopted son will help the mother company explore development markets in the future. Motorola's decades-long relationships with local telecom carriers will also allow Lenovo access to the high-end smartphone sector, industrial experts said.