Lenovo sells more phones and tablets than PCs for first time

If you’re in the hardware game, it might not be a bad idea to pay very close attention to Lenovo. The Chinese company is not only the world’s top PC manufacturer, it’s also now doing a roaring trade in smartphones and tablets.

In its latest financial results, the hardware giant revealed that it actually sold more mobile smart devices than it did PCs in the last quarter.

That’s pretty impressive, considering that its managed to buck the worldwide decline in PC sales. Lenovo’s PC shipments for the first fiscal quarter were 12.6-million units, giving it 16.7% of global marketshare.

The real story though is that it’s selling more mobile devices than it is PCs, spurred largely its performance in China, where it owns 42% of the market. That number only looks set to get bigger too, with the company keen to start selling smartphones in the US.

That could see it become one of the more likely contenders in the bid to unseat Samsung and Apple from the global smartphone top spots. It won’t be an easy task, but Lenovo is the world’s fourth largest smartphone supplier and claims to have recorded the fastest growth among the top five vendors, growing 132%.

“Smartphones are our new opportunity,” said CEO Yang Yuanqing, but a bid to leapfrog up the charts with a BlackBerry acquisition doesn’t seem any more likely now than it did a few months ago.

“If a target or deal is consistent with Lenovo’s strategy, we would take the opportunity,” Yang told the Wall Street Journal, although he refused to be drawn on “any specific target or deal.”