Lenovo 4G Smartphone Sales On A Tear In India, Ships A Million Handsets Online

When Lenovo Group Limited released the A6000 in India at an introductory price of 6,999 rupees (about $110) in January, it was the cheapest 4G phone in the market compared to rivals like Xiaomi Corp.’s Redmi Note and Indian competitor Micromax Yureka.

Since then, Lenovo has bumped up the price of the handset and released successive iterations, including the A6000 Plus and the A7000, and Indian smartphone buyers, spoilt for choice like never before, are ensuring the phones fly off the shelves.

Lenovo has now shipped its first million 4G handsets in the period through June in just online sales through Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company, the Chinese smartphone maker said, in a press release, on Friday. Shipments of 4G-LTE devices in India have more than doubled at 108 percent to 2.2 million units in the three months through March, Lenovo said in the release, citing data from CyberMedia Research.

“Even for consumers not on 4G networks, the combination of aesthetics, performance and usability along with unique aspects like Dolby Atmos made the product offerings very attractive,” Lenovo said.

While India’s 4G networks are very nascent and limited to specific pockets such as Bangalore, the country’s tech hub, interest in smartphones has soared, helping Chinese vendors like Lenovo, Xiaomi and others boost sales in the third-largest smartphone market in the world.

Dolby Atmos is a surround-sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories Inc., used in theaters and auditoriums, which the company brought more recently to smartphones and tablets. Lenovo is one of the vendors that ships smartphones equipped with the technology, and the feature has been a strong reason for Lenovo's success in a country crazy about film music.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct introductory price of the Lenovo A6000 in India, which was originally reported as selling for 5,999 rupees.