Smartphone sales push Lenovo to No. 3

LENOVO Group Ltd has overtaken Hewlett-Packard to become the world's No. 3 smart connected device vendor in 2012, thanks to a rapidly growing smartphone market share, a US-based research firm said yesterday.

Samsung and Apple remained the top two in the global smart connected device market, which refers to smartphones, tablet computers, laptops and desktop computers, according to International Data Corp.

The overall smart connected device market continued to surge to more than 1.2 billion shipments in 2012, a 29.1 percent growth year on year, mainly due to surging smartphone and tablet sales. Smartphone sales jumped 46.1 percent and tablet sales soared 78.4 percent while sales of desktops and laptops both declined, according to IDC.

"Smartphones and tablets are growing at a pace that PCs can't realistically keep up with because of device prices and to some extent disposability," said Ryan Reith, IDC's analyst.

Samsung led the market with a 20.8 percent share, followed by Apple's 18.2 percent, Lenovo's 6.5 percent, HP's 4.8 percent and Dell with 3.2 percent.

Smartphones are a growth area for Lenovo as sales grew from 3.7 million units in 2011 to 23.7 million units in 2012. HP and Dell, however, lack smartphone and tablet offerings, analysts explained.

The decline in prices of tablets and smartphones will continue to help mobile devices gain more market share than traditional PCs, according to IDC.

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