Lenovo tests out a news and messaging app exclusive to Vibe X owners in Indonesia

Lenovo (HKG:0992) launched its Vibe X smartphone in Indonesia last month, and it came with an exclusive app called Dragon (pictured below). It’s an app comprised of a news feed and messenger hub. Indonesia is a test market for the Dragon app, and it will be rolled out to Lenovo’s other models and markets pending a positive reception from Indonesian consumers.

While the news portal aspect is nothing special, Dragon is useful in automatically storing and updating cached versions of news articles so users can read them when offline. The messenger hub looks cool, aggregating all of your social activities into a single app, including BBM, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Line, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, Skype, Hangouts, Path, and SMS. You can read all your messages inside the app, but you will be redirected to the respective apps when you want to reply.

The team behind Dragon’s development plans to launch a new function called “My Operator,” which lets users monitor and top-up their phone credit. Users can also expect more features in the coming months, such as games and e-commerce.

Lenovo’s doing very well in Indonesia, according to Lenovo Indonesia’s Agus Sugiarto who claims that they have 10.2 percent of Indonesia’s smartphone market. The team aims to increase that market share to 15 percent this year. Samsung is still the king of smartphones in Indonesia.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff and Steven Millward)