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Lenovo To Focus On Offline Sales, Channel Growth

Channel Growth

Bengaluru: Smartphone maker Lenovo is planning large-scale expansion and will reportedly invest in experiential marketing, online and offline retail and differentiated products as it aims to further cement its footprints in the India.

Worldwide and in India, the company said, it is looking ay rapid growth for its channel and will make substantial investments in innovative and specialized partners who can reach them to newer markets. The company is using channel partners to hone in on areas like the client and data center segments, as well as vertical markets.

In India, the company is looking at consolidating its business and is emphasizing on offline retail.
“We have grown from being No 31 in 2013 to being No 2 in 2016. We are focussed on bringing in differentiated products and offering premium experience to consumers,” Business Standard quoted Sudhin Mathur, Executive Director, Lenovo MBG India as saying.

Online channel accounts for two-thirds of the company’s sale. “We will also invest in setting up exclusive stores that will give hands on experience for all phones, starting with pilots with large format retail stores…The next growth will come from offline,” he added.

According to IDC, online share of smartphone increased to 31.6 percent with impressive 35 percent Quarter-on-Quarter (QoQ) growth due to strong performance by key online players primarily from China-based vendors. Also, closing weeks of the quarter witnessed incremental supplies as many vendors were preparing their inventories for the online festival sales in October. Lenovo Group continues to lead online channel followed by Xiaomi.

“Lenovo Group accounts for almost one-fourth of total online smartphone shipments driven primarily by Lenovo’s K5 series and Motorola’s G4 series models. Also, Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 3 and newly launched Redmi 3S fuelled the online shipments to a large extent”, said, Karthik J , Senior Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC India.

“Lenovo has a focused execution plan for this business: we are strengthening our field capabilities and channel engagement, investing in training and overhauling our sales structure to better engage with our customers,” said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo, sometime back.

The smartphone market has become very competitive with Chinese brands like Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo pushing the Indian ones out of the top five position.

“We are working with various developers for future mods, some concepts of which include printer capability, VR mod, charger mod for powering other mods and the phone etc…We will be bringing out three to four mods every quarter, which will come at different and more affordable price points,” Mathur said.

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