Mobile Leadership Strategies

Chinese electronics company Lenovo has tried for some time to expand beyond its core PC manufacturing business and create a bigger name for itself in the mobile market. Recent comments by CFO Wong Wai Ming gave insight into how the company plans to do so.

According to TG Daily, Ming, speaking at World Economic Forum meetings in Switzerland, said Lenovo is looking into various acquisition possibilities, but the most significant of these is the possibility of buying out Canada’s Research In Motion (RIM). The company behind the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform has earned much attention recently as its resurgence pushes forward, meaning any such deal could be a boon for Lenovo’s mobile ambitions. To complete any such deal, however, both sides would first have to see how BB10 is received in the mobile industry, as well as overcome any hurdles put forth by Canadian government regulators.

Yankee Group Senior VP of Research Wally Swain comments

“This deal might make sense strategically in a PowerPoint presentation from an expensive consulting firm or an investment bank, but from a practical viewpoint, governments in the United States and probably Canada as well will block it.

There is a chance that Canada’s nostalgia for its lost telecom R&D leadership will cause the government to block the deal. More likely, it will be blocked by the U.S. government or U.S. government pressure on the Canadian government because Lenovo is a Chinese company.

RIM has lost a lot of market share in the U.S. government to the BYOD trend and incursions by Apple. Strangely enough, the Canadian government is 100 percent focused on RIM. But I doubt highly that the U.S. would let the provider of Barack Obama’s smartphone fall into Chinese hands.”