Lenovo reverses course, buys back mobile handset division for $200 million
Oh Lenovo, does the Chinese launch of Dell’s smartphone leave you feeling left behind? Are you having a bit of seller’s remorse? In an announcement made recently, Lenovo confirmed that it will buy back the mobile handset division that it spun off in January 2008. The world’s 4th largest PC manufacturer will re-purchase Lenovo Mobile for $200 million in cash and stocks from a group of investors who bought it for $100 million. The mobile division, unprofitable when sold, reaped a profit of 30.4 million yuan ($4.45 million USD) last year and now ranks third in China’s highly lucrative mobile phone market. Lenovo hopes to capitalize upon this success and take advantage of key growth opportunities in China’s mobile Internet market. Welcome back, Lenovo. Too bad it took a $200 million cover charge to get you back into the party.
Everyone wants a piece of the mobile pie.
Sounds like there are some good business decisions going on over at Lenovo…… Sell for $100M buy for $200M, I guess the look at it as paying a consultant $100M to make the division profitable.
I worked for IBM at the time when the sold of the PC division to them. When they were educating us about the company i was kinda excited about there phones they looked impressive at the time. Kinda cool ya know? But that was 3 almost four years ago. Well I’ll be interested to see how things develop. I wish I was one of those investors ho bought it. I’d basically have doubled my money.
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They want to make Android phones. I say it’s a smart move for lenovo, they are already in the netbook business, their mobile phones will probably be pretty sweet.
yes, they call it Ophone.
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I have a Lenovo with AT&T and love it!
I guess that they hope not only to make and sell their own phones but to also sell manufacturing capacity to others in the huge and emerging Chinese market.
I want that O-PHONE in the states asap.