Lenovo’s Motorola for Business to venture into LatAm govt, utilities sectors

Lenovo’s Motorola Mobility, the second biggest smartphone vendor in Latin America, seeks to expand the reach of its B2B unit by jumping on opportunities in new business verticals, such as governments and utilities.

Launched globally in 2023 and starting in Brazil, the company’s B2B business arm, Motorola for Business, has a significant presence in the region in segments like retail, banking, healthcare and agriculture, according to the head of the unit for Brazil, James Mattos.

The company is now bidding for tenders in the public sector.

“We're growing in government, participating [directly or indirectly] in several bids with the possibility of selling Motorola phones,” Mattos told BNamericas.

In the government vertical, the main focus is on customized solutions and smartphones for security forces. 

These are different devices than the mission-critical radios and phones supplied by another Motorola unit, Motorola Solutions, whose main business verticals are in the defense and public security segments. 

Motorola Solutions is a US company, headquartered in Chicago, and is not part of the Lenovo group.

“What we've been trying to show government agencies is that now it's truly possible to have a rugged smartphone in the hands of public security in some government sectors,” added Mattos.

With utilities, the executive said that Motorola for Business has made progress in discussions and that its products and service packages, especially solutions involving screen handling with wet fingers, called Smart Water Touch, are being well received by companies in the field, such as water and power firms.

Market

According to IDC’s 2Q24 regional smartphones report, Motorola retained the second spot in the Latin American market with a 17% share, a slight increase compared to the previous quarter.

Samsung continues to lead, while Motorola is followed by the Chinese brand Xiaomi.

A Q2 report from Canalys said that Xiaomi had overtaken Motorola, which Lenovo denied.

All of this market data concerns the smartphone segment as a whole, without distinction between B2C, end consumer, and B2B and corporate.

According to Mattos, however, information from companies and data extrapolation confirm that Motorola is also second in smartphones among companies. 

These sales figures, he said, come mainly from the largest mobile operators in Brazil and in the region, which are the main sales channels for Motorola for Business.

In April the company opened its first Motorola for Business experience center in Latin America in Mexico, in partnership with AT&T.

Strategies

The company's strategy for the corporate segment goes beyond selling smartphone models with features and functionalities specific to business.

It also includes offering security solutions, mobile device management, the Mototalk push-to-talk application with AI, and integration with systems and other corporate devices, even those that do not run the Android operating system.

Also, the company is betting on cross-selling and upselling with other solutions and products from its parent. Lenovo is the world's top PC vendor, ahead of HP and Dell, and is also one of the top three server vendors with growing presence in Latin America's datacenter and supercomputer segments.

“This is the great asset we have in this corporate ecosystem, which I believe no other brand has. Lenovo offers phones, computers, tablets, servers, solutions... what we call from the pocket to the cloud,” said Mattos.

Over the past 10 years, Motorola claims to have invested 500bn reais (US$82bn) in R&D in Latin America. 

The Motorola for Business unit does not disclose how many clients it has in the region, but they include Ambev, 3M, Neogrid (with whom it also has a commercial partnership), meat giants JBS and BrFoods, and Prosegur.

Brazil is the unit's main market, followed by Mexico. After structuring the business in Latin America, Lenovo now intends to expand the Motorola B2B operation in Asia and the Middle East, said Mattos.

Lenovo bought the brand from Google for US$2.91bn in 2014.