Lenovo said that following its acquisition of Motorola’s smartphone business, it has become “a truly global player, the third largest vendor of smartphones behind Samsung and Apple and their most credible challenger”.

The company said that “unlike many smaller mobile players that rely almost completely on a slowing China market”, it now sees about 60 per cent of its volume from outside of its home country, having entered 67 countries in the last two years.

“Lenovo has built the scale, distribution, brand assets and IP portfolio required to compete around the world and challenge the top two players,” it said in a statement.

The company also said that Motorola shipped more than 10 million units in its Q3 period to end-December, up 118 per cent year-on-year, adding $1.9 billion to revenue. With the brand re-entering the China market, Lenovo said that this business is “on track to be profitable within 4-6 quarters of close”.

Combined with Lenovo’s own-brand sales, group smartphone shipments grew by around 78 per cent to 24.7 million, driven by “aggressive business expansion in emerging markets outside of China from Lenovo-brand products” as well as the Motorola increase.

Lenovo’s mobile business reported a pre-tax loss for the quarter of $89 million, compared with a $2 million loss in the prior-year, on revenue which increased 109 per cent to $3.39 billion.

The company also said that its global tablet market share was 4.8 per cent, with 3.7 million shipments, up 9 per cent year-on-year, powered by the launch of its latest Yoga tablet line. This unit has focused on “balancing its growth and profitability”.

On a group level, the company reported a 5 per cent drop in profit attributable to equity holders of $253 million, on revenue up 31 per cent to $14.09 billion.

The company’s bottom line was affected by a number of M&A-related expenses, including those related to its Motorola and System X (IBM server hardware) acquisitions.