Lenovo Has Got it Right: The Lenovo Vibe S1 is a Champion of the Mid-range division!

Has anybody noticed Lenovo’s steady ascend in the Indian smartphone market? Perhaps the smartphone pundits have but the fact that Lenovo is now India’s third best smartphone brand by value is a fact little known outside tech echelons. Slowly but surely Lenovo is catching up with the two distinct giants of the Indian smartphone market – Samsung and Micromax.

Samsung is the international behemoth and Micromax is the local Goliath. How does Lenovo compete against these two brands? Well, Lenovo plans on dishing out more phones. And then some more.

Lenovo has expansive expansion plans

The latest addition to Lenovo’s Vibe brand, the Lenovo Vibe S1, is a prime example of Lenovo’s expand-till-you-can’t-do-it-no-more strategy. Lenovo’s mobile division is currently powered by three sub-brands. Lenovo owns the iconic Motorola brand along with the Lemon and Vibe brands and has made its intentions to double its India smartphone production to 10 million units by the end of next year. This could propel Lenovo to the third spot in the world’s most competitive smartphone landscape.

The specs on the Vibe S1

Let’s take a quick glance at the Vibe S1’s specifications. The Lenovo Vibe S1 has a 5 inch display that boasts of a pixel density of 441 ppi. The Vibe S1 comes with a Mediatek MT6752 chipset and an Octa-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A53 processing unit. Perhaps the most compelling feature of the Vibe S1 is the fact that it has a 3GB RAM, which is a commendable spec for a mid-range phone. The Vibe S1 comes with an internal memory of 32 GB and has a microSD card slot which can accommodate up to 128 GB.

More from iSpyPrice: Go check out the Lenovo Vibe S1 Mobile Price

The rear and front cameras on the Vibe S1 are 13 MP and 8 MP respectively. The battery is a non-removable Li-Po 2420 mAh battery, which is another feature that stands out for a mid-range phone. The Vibe S1 is powered by Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

Who is Lenovo’s main competition?

The Vibe S1 is brilliantly priced at Rs. 15,999. Given its specs this is as exciting a mid-range phone as any in the Indian market right now. We know that Lenovo wants visibility in all market segments and is not restricting itself to a particular price range. This is why Lenovo is essentially competing with every other smartphone brand in India and they may very well be one of the very few brands that has a product offering for all kinds of consumers.

More from iSpyPrice: One of Lenovo Vibe S1’s competition is the OnePlus X Mobile

The name of the game seems to be not isolating any consumer price point perspective and giving everyone a wide variety of options to choose from. The Vibe S1 will be competing against the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, Gionee, and OnePlus. All of these brands offer smartphones in a similar price bracket and it will be interesting to see if these brands decide to take a leaf out of Lenovo’s book and up the ante on specifications for mid-range phones.

As a team well aware of the power of price comparison, we at iSpyPrice believe the consumers interest will more than likely compel other brands to consider upping the ante. Keep watching this space because 3 GB phones under Rs. 15,000 may become commonplace pretty soon, folks.

Where does Lenovo stand in the Indian smartphone market?

Research firm IDC revealed in its September findings that Lenovo now stands as the fourth largest smartphone maker in India by volume as it controls 9.5% of the overall market. The same findings also revealed that Lenovo is the third most valuable smartphone brand in India right now. The company notched up 11% in value.  Both of these statistics are equally remarkable because these have materialized inside a year for Lenovo. Lenovo wasn’t in the top 5 in either of those categories even as recently as the second half of 2014.

More from iSpyPrice: Here is our take on the Lenovo Phab Plus Tablet

It is important to point out that the merger of Lenovo’s mobile division with the Motorola brand has a definite impact on these figures but that doesn’t take anything away from Lenovo’s strategic expansion plans which seem to be paying off.

Check out this quick unboxing and review video of the Lenovo Vibe S1 by PhoneBunch: