CHART OF THE DAY: Lenovo Bumps Xiaomi To Become The Third-Biggest Smartphone Maker In The World
Xiaomi, the so-called "Apple of China," has been on a roll recently. But even after shipping 18 million handsets in the last quarter, achieving a whopping year-over-year growth of 239% during that period, the Chinese tech company has been unseated from its spot as the third-biggest smartphone maker in the world by Lenovo, which just completed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility last Thursday.
According to IDC data charted for us by BI Intelligence, Lenovo is now the third-biggest smartphone maker in the world, after Apple and Samsung. Before the Motorola acquisition cleared, Lenovo had achieved 38% year-over-year growth thanks to expansion in China and other emerging markets, shipping more smartphones in the first three quarters of 2014 than it did in all of 2013 (46 million vs. 45.5 million units, respectively). But now that Lenovo has acquired Motorola, the company has better leverage in the US; Liu Jun, the president of Lenovo Mobile Business Group, says he expects the company to sell more than 100 million mobile devices in the coming year.