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Lenovo expects the growing market for 7-inch tablets to compete with large-screen smartphones, not PCs.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call Thursday, Lenovo Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing said he had just read a report on Apple’s iPad Mini and was encouraged about the trend in the tablet market.
“The market accepts the 7-inch [tablet] better than the 10-inch. That’s a very strong signal, the tablet will not replace the traditional PC,” he said during the conference call.
Yuanqing continued. “Probably, the tablet will compete with the large-screen smartphone rather than the PC,” he added.
Popular smartphones, like the 1,280×720 resolution 4.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S3, sport large displays that are approaching five inches in size.
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And DisplaySearch said in a research note today that future smartphones will have 5-inch displays with a stunning 1,920×1,080 pixel density.
Yuanqing also commented on touch screens coming to Windows 8 laptops.
“Touch will become a very popular feature on the traditional PC,” he said, adding that Lenovo is trying to secure a steady supply of these screens. “We can’t guarantee we’ll get 100 percent of what we want to get [but] we are definitely trying our best to get enough supply,” he said.
That said, Lenovo believes that so-called convertibles — laptops that can be converted to a tablet — will become more popular than traditional clamshell laptops with touch screens.
And he cited the company’s Yoga convertible as an example of how they’re aggressively addressing this new market.
