Digitimes Research: Lenovo mobile device shipments to lead Samsung by 9 million units in 2015

Jim Hsiao and Joanne Chien, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

Enjoying growths in both tablet and notebook shipments, Lenovo is estimated to beat Samsung Electronics in mobile computing device shipments (notebooks and tablets) by about one million units in 2014 and become the second-largest mobile computing device brand vendor worldwide, only behind Apple.

Despite difficulties to achieve further shipment growths for its tablet business, Lenovo with its advantage as the largest notebook brand vendor worldwide and aggressive promotions of its inexpensive and phone-enabled tablets is expected to achieve 50 million in total tablet and notebook shipments in 2015, widening its gap with Samsung to nine million units.

Because tablet demand will weaken in 2015, Lenovo's and Samsung's strategies for the mobile computing device market are expected to focus on maintaining their tablet shipments. Digitimes Research believes Lenovo's shipments for tablets with phone functions to emerging markets in 2015 are expected to remain strong.

Meanwhile, its Wi-Fi-based inexpensive tablets are expected to see a limited shipment decline in 2015 as the devices will cannabalize China's white-box tablets thanks to the brand vendor's advantages in the retail channel and its China-based supply chain to provide low-cost solutions. Lenovo's overall tablet shipments are expected to grow slightly on year to 11.7 million units in 2015.

Samsung's aggressive expansion of its tablet product line in the first half of 2014 did not receive a good response from the market. Since the company is expected to turn conservative about its tablet business and place most of the resources on the smartphone business in 2015, Digitimes Research expects the Korea-based vendor's tablet shipments to drop to 36 million units in the year.

As for the notebook business, after phasing out from the market in the second half of 2013, Samsung's shipment volume has dropped rapidly and is only expected to reach five million units in 2015.

After becoming the largest notebook brand vendor in 2013, Lenovo has continued expanding its share in the notebook market and increasing its shipments. The China-based vendor is expected to ship 38 million notebooks in 2015.

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