Posted by Yes; it is a horrible bloodbath in mobile. HTC. BlackBerry. Microsoft Mobile. Sony. Samsung. LG. All of these brands are either making losses or experiencing a decline in profit margins.
And now, we have news that Lenovo, the fifth largest smartphone brand in the world, is laying off 3,200 staff after “a disappointing last quarter of business”. The brand will also write off $300 million in unsold smartphones.
In addition, Lenovo is restructuring its mobile business such that all smartphone design, development, and manufacturing will now be handled by its subsidiary, Motorola. In addition, the brand will be cutting down on number of models and instead produce “a more streamlined product portfolio with a reduced number of clearly differentiated models”.
Founder of MobilityArena. Yomi’s journey in mobile started in 2001. Besides obsessing over mobile phones, he also started creating WAP sites (early mobile-friendly websites created with WML). He began writing about phones in 2004 and has been at it since then. He has owned over 200 devices, from Symbian, Palm, PocketPC/Windows Mobile, BlackBerry/BB10, webOS, Windows Phone, Firefox, Ubuntu Touch, to Android, iOS, and KaiOS operating systems.
This is what happens when smartphones become cheaper and cheaper
Yes; cheaper (and free) is what will kill all business eventually.
well that escalated quickly, Lenovo (& Motorola) were on ghr up & up, and then this? wonder how Motorola’s performance figures into all this
This was predictable and not surprising at all.
Once the market got saturated, the bigger brands would suffer and we’re seeing it now. I wonder what the market will look like when we get to Android X?
apparently Lenovo’s mobile division will be folded into (or is absorbed by) Motorola Mobility
http://thedroidguy.com/2015/08/motorola-to-absorb-lenovos-mobile-division-1048472