Lenovo chief mulls BlackBerry buy

Lenovo chief executive Yang Yuanqing has said that his company would consider buying Blackberry if the opportunity arises.

Yuanqing said in a recent interview with French newspaper Les Echos that Lenovo buying BlackBerry could make sense down the road - a view backed by industry analysts,.

According to Yuanqing, Lenovo would have to consider the potential value of BlackBerry in the current mobile market before pulling the trigger

BlackBerry has struggled in recent years, as the company's base has slowly been eroded by the growth of smartphones from Apple and Android.

The handset maker recently released the BlackBerry Z10 earlier this year. BlackBerry's latest smartphone has yet to ignite the needed consumer response to get the company back on its feet.

For Lenovo, a possible BlackBerry purchase would be used to jump start its move into the mobile phone sector. The China-based company currently makes its money though sales of its PCs and tablets. However, the firm has looked into building up its mobile phone portfolio.

Lenovo's move to smartphones would be based on the fact that the PC market has suffered a downturn in recent years. With the growth of tablets and smartphones, sales of personal computers have been on a downturn.

According to Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, the purchase of Blackberry could prove valuable for Lenovo. Moorhead says that Lenovo's past acquisition history shows it could do well building out business-focused smartphones.

"While Lenovo has started to diversify from PCs, it needs to step up the pace," Moorhead told V3.

"A BlackBerry acquisition, at the right price, could make sense. Lenovo did a good job with the ThinkPad brand and I can see them extending it to business phones."

In 2005, Lenovo bought IBM's PC division, ThinkPad. As of 2013, Lenovo's PC division owns the second highest marketshare in the industry, selling 14 percent of all PCs sold.

Principal analyst at Pund-IT Charles King added that the Lenovo and BlackBerry pairing would be a good match for the business-centric PC maker.

"The deal would make Lenovo an automatic player among the enterprise and public sector customers that make up one of the most lucrative mobile technology markets," King told V3.

"BlackBerry's would make natural companion devices for business-focused Lenovo products, such as the ThinkPad line."