According to The Wall Street Journal, Lenovo’s CEO, Yang Yuanqing, says the company will enter the U.S. smartphone market within a year. He goes on to say that “smartphones are our new opportunity”, and even hints that the company might have to make some acquisitions in order to get the attention they deserve.

For those of you who don’t know about Lenovo, they were a nobody back in the early 00s, but then they purchased IBM’s PC division and quickly became the world’s largest computer vendor. As someone who used to use ThinkPads exclusively, I was scared that Lenovo would screw things up, but they didn’t.

In China, Lenovo is the second largest smartphone maker, right behind Samsung. Their flagship device is the K900, which is a 5.5 inch 1080p handset sporting an Intel chipset. It looks stunning, easily better than anything I’ve seen from either Huawei or ZTE. If I had to make a bet as to who will become the next major smartphone vendor, it would definitely be these guys since they focus on logistics better than their local competitors.

Lenovo already has a tight relationship, so I see them leveraging that to their advantage. Yes, Intel doesn’t have any 4G LTE enabled smartphone platforms out now, but that will soon change. And mark my words, Intel is eager to displace Qualcomm as the mobile SoC leader.