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Lenovo eyes acquisitions in growth, expansion drive

Lenovo, not content with its soon-to-be number one spot in the PC making business, wants to maintain its market dominance by considering acquisitions to push into new areas -- like mobile devices.
Written by Zack Whittaker, Contributor

Lenovo is eyeing acquisition opportunities and buy-outs in order to expand its mobile device divisions, its chief executive told Bloomberg in a phone interview.

"Any area which is consistent with our strategy where we are weak, we would like to consider acquisitions," said Lenovo's Yang Yuanqing. 

Once PC shipment figures results for August are released later this month, Lenovo will likely be crowned the world's biggest maker of PCs, overtaking hardware giants such as Dell and HP, who continue to decline in global market share.

With PC building sorted, Lenovo is looking for the next big thing -- and it's been staring it in the face all along. When you can't invest, buy and snap up. That's exactly what it did with IBM's PC building unit which, so far at least, has fared the company pretty well.

Lenovo leapfrogged Apple in the three months ending June for the second place in smartphone sales in China. The China-based computer giant said it will introduce 40 mobile devices -- feature phones and smartphones -- from April 2013. 

Some companies use just one model to cover all the price bands and customer segments," Yang said, seemingly digging at Apple. Taking a leaf out of Nokia's way of thinking: "We will have multiple models to cover different price bands. We will have a much broader, wider product portfolio."

"Our development cycle will be much faster than our competitors."

The firm's next wave of mergers and acquisitions will likely take aim at mobile devices -- including smartphones and tablets -- and Internet TVs, as the firm continues to develop and grow both domestically and internationally.

Lenovo's loss-making mobile unit will become profitable "a couple of quarters," or around six months, Yuanqing said.

While PCs will remain at the heart of Lenovo's business for years, one of the core reasons why HP and Dell failed to maintain their dominant position was their lackluster attempts at bridging the mobile divide at the dawn of the post-PC era.

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