Research Company Claims Lenovo Now Second-Biggest Mobile Brand in China

Market research company Sino Market Research is reporting that Lenovo has hopped past Huawei and Nokia to control the second-largest chunk of China’s mobile market, according to tech news outlets like Sina Tech and Techweb. While the data should be taken with a grain of salt — Sino Market Research hasn’t yet posted the report on its site, and the Chinese tech sites appear to be getting their information from a Lenovo executive — if true, the data shows a pretty impressive upswing in Lenovo’s market share. No wonder its CEO is feeling generous.

Sino’s Q1 report shows that at that time, Lenovo controlled 8.8 percent of China’s total mobile market, which put it in a tie for third place with Huawei. But just three months later, this new data is showing that Lenovo has rocketed past Huawei and Nokia to take second place with 11 percent of the overall market. Samsung remains the leader. We’ve taken the liberty of putting the new Sino data into an interactive chart and comparing it with the Q1 report so you can see what’s changed:

As evidenced by the chart above, Lenovo’s ascendance came along with big drops in market share from both Nokia and Samsung. Nokia’s downward spiral shouldn’t surprise anyone, and Samsung’s also makes sense given that its highly-priced smartphones are facing increasing competition in China from inexpensive domestic competitors.

Of course, Lenovo has to deal with those competitors, too, and there may be more details or mitigating factors that we’re not aware of because Sino Market Research hasn’t released the full report on its website yet. If you take the numbers at face value, though, it looks like Lenovo had a pretty impressive quarter.