Lenovo Gearing Up To Design Its Own Mobile Processor ICs

You have to wonder: how many companies have to do the same thing before it officially becomes a trend? With Samsung, Apple and select mega-corporations all mulling the idea (or moving forward with plans) to construct their own silicon, it shouldn't come as a major surprise to hear that Lenovo is considering the same. Of course, Lenovo makes far fewer smartphones and tablets compared to the likes of Samsung and Apple, but it ships a vast, vast quantity of business laptops that it has to lean heavily on Intel for.


A report from EETimes suggests that Lenovo will "get into the chip design business with a special focus on smartphones and tablets," but much like the company's existing plans, this isn't apt to make a huge impact outside of China. You see, Lenovo ships a lot of mobile devices in its home country, but it's barely on the radar in North America. So, it makes sense that any homegrown chips would first be trotted out to the home market. Over the past 10 years or so, Lenovo has kept an in-house group of chip designers, but now they're considering a major expansion that would push their design team to over 100 engineers by mid-2013.

The plan is pretty simple: it wants to have more control over the entire construction of its phones and tablets, and since the mobile market is apt to eclipse the non-mobile market in due time, it's a pretty good move from a strategy standpoint.