New report says Lenovo ranks 3rd in global smartphone sales, but does it really?

A Q3 2013 report of global smartphone sales says China’s Lenovo (HKG:0992) rose to 5.1 percent market share to beat South Korea’s LG (KRX:066570; LSE:LGLD), according to Gartner. The report says Lenovo’s sales grew by 12.9 million units, up 84.5 percent over last year.

Avid Tech in Asia readers might notice this information conflicts with an earlier report from Strategy Analytics, which put Lenovo down in fifth place below both LG and Huawei. Further muddying the waters, IDC’s Q3 numbers put Lenovo in between the two at fourth place.

Here’s the market share stats of the top five smartphone vendors from the three analytics firms mentioned, along with the averages of all three.