Lenovo

It’s early but we’re here at the Moto ‘Choose a Better Relationship” event in NYC. We’re obviously expecting a new Moto X and Moto G but we’re really excited to see what a better mobile relationship entails. We’re live! Head below for the latest.

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A new report claims that Motorola will be launching its next budget-friendly Moto in stores on July 29th, just one day after its launch event. But that’s not the most exciting part of the story. If the leaked retail memos are genuine, customers will be able to walk in to stores and order their personalized Moto Maker device from a physical, brick-and-mortar store…
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If a recent — slightly sketchy — report is anything to go by, Motorola could be set to announce new versions of its popular stock Android phones. A new Moto X “Sport” and a new Moto G have shown up in leaks which come from Chilean operator, Entel. 
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Lenovo has today shown off a couple of product prototypes that fall somewhere on the scale with ‘interesting tech’ at one end and ‘batsh*t crazy’ at the other… Buck Rogers style.

The first is Magic View, a smartwatch with a second display – a really tiny one – embedded in the strap. The idea appears to be that when the main display alerts you to new content, you hold the tiny screen up very, very close to your eye to view that content on the second display. I’m just waiting for someone wearing Google Glass and someone with their smartwatch in front of their nose to walk into each other … 
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Lenovo’s first full quarter since it completed the acquisition of Motorola from Google brought good news and bad: smartphone shipments and revenue up, but profits down.

TechCrunch reports that Lenovo shipped a record 18.7M smartphones in the final quarter of 2014, reported now, with year-on-year revenues up 21% – but profits fell 37% … 
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An image was supposedly posted today by Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing on Chinese microblogging site Weibo (via MyDrivers), showing what looks to be an unreleased prototype of the Moto 360 smartwatch. It’s not clear whether or not this is indeed an upcoming version of the device (it’s almost surely a prototype), but it definitely looks to be a bit different than what’s currently available…
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Lenovo this evening has reported its calendar Q4 2014 earnings, and as is well-known, Motorola is now a part of the company, so the earnings are bit more interesting this time around. According to the earnings release, Motorola Mobility sold 10 million smartphones last quarter, which is up 118 percent compared to the year ago quarter.

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IDC is out today with its numbers on tablet shipments for Q4 2014 showing Apple & Samsung remained on top of the market both last quarter and throughout 2014 despite a slight drop in overall market share.

Apple sold 21.4 million iPads during the holiday quarter last year, which gave the company around 28% market share compared to 33% with 26 million units sold during the same quarter last year. Apple beats out number two Samsung, according to IDC, which grabbed 14.5% of the market in Q4 with 11 million units shipped. Samsung also dipped in overall market share from 17.2% with 13.5 million units shipped in the year ago quarter.
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At CES 2015, Lenovo has unveiled a handful of new Android-powered devices, including both phones and tablets. First off, the company has announced the Vibe X2 Pro (seen above, left), which is an updated version of the Vibe X2 we saw back at IFA. The X2 Pro features a 5.3-inch 1080p display and is powered by a 64-bit 1.5GHz octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor. There are also two 13MP cameras on the device, one on the front and one on the back. The Vibe X2 Pro launches in April outside the U.S. and is powered by Android 4.4 with Lenovo’s custom skin on top.

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Many Samsung employees are expected to lose their jobs in the next week or two as the company is set to announce its annual personnel changes early next month. The company recently reported a 74% drop in mobile profits and is planning to produce 30% fewer smartphone models next year in the face of increasing competition from Chinese brands Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei.

Dramatically slowing sales of its flagship handset led the company to shore up its share price with a $2B stock buyback … 
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While Google confirmed the $2.9B sale of Motorola way back in January, it is only today that the last piece of paperwork was signed and the formerly American-owned Motorola officially became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese electronics manufacturer Lenovo.

Announcing the completion of the acquisition on the Motorola blog, the company said that its headquarters would remain in Chicago, along with its offices in Silicon Valley … 
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Almost a year ago, Lenovo announced that Ashton Kutcher was one of its newest product engineers. At first, the move felt like another bogus celebrity title with a major company (remember when BlackBerry named Alicia Keys its creative director?), but the Dude, Where’s My Car? star actually has some tech cred. Invested in a large number of successful startups, Kutcher also studied biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa.

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Chinese company Lenovo, which is in the process of buying the Motorola brand from Google, has reported a 23 percent year-on-year increase in first-quarter profits to $214M, reports Reuters. The company also said that worldwide phone sales were up 39 percent, in line with recent IDC numbers.

While Lenovo recently became the market leader within China, CEO Yang Yuanqing said that the company will in future be focusing on more profitable overseas markets … 
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Following releasing its second quarter data for tablet shipments worldwide, IDC today released its Q2 2014 report for smartphone shipments during the three month period that ended in June. The numbers line up with Apple’s fiscal Q3 earnings call that took place earlier this month where the company reported iPhone sales of 35.1 million units for the quarter. With 295.3 million units shipped total during Q2, IDC notes that both Samsung and Apple lost share to the smaller Chinese manufacturers:
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Over the weekend, a report was published claiming that Google and Motorola were working together on a 5.9-inch Nexus device codenamed the Shamu. This afternoon, The Information published a separate report corroborating this weekend’s source.

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Lenovo’s $2.91 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google is still pending regulatory approval, however it looks like the company is already mapping out a new strategy. Despite being one of the world’s largest PC makers, Lenovo is halting the development of Windows tablets under 10 inches in size and migrating its remaining inventory to markets like Brazil, China and Japan where there’s more of a need for low-cost slates.

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Reuters reports that almost 200 Samsung managers have “voluntarily” handed back a quarter of their first-half bonuses in anticipation of what is expected to be the company’s worst quarterly profit for two years.

The decision to return some of the bonus was partly a gesture to demonstrate that managers are taking responsibility for the earnings decline, and partly a way to show that management will work harder, the source told Reuters on Friday, declining to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

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Photo: ibtimes.com

After warning earlier this month that Q2 didn’t “look too good,” Samsung today released its earnings preview for the second quarter of 2014. The South Korean company reported an operating profit of $7.1 billion (7.2 trillion won), missing analyst estimates of $8 billion (8.1 trillion won). This comes out to a 24 percent drop year over year (via Bloomberg).

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