The LePhone is a smart phone produced by Lenovo. The LePhone is known as the "ideaphone" outside of Mainland China.
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Lenovo launched the LePhone in order to compete against Apple's iPhone and other smart phones. The LePhone is offered at a relatively low price point, about half the cost of an iPhone, and is customized for the Chinese market. The LePhone has benefited from strong support from Chinese mobile phone companies and content providers such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.
Lenovo sold its mobile phone division in 2008 in order to focus on its personal computer business and then paid $200 million to buy it back in November of 2009. Lenovo re-acquired its mobile division in order to focus on mobile internet devices such as smart phones and tablet computers[1]
The LePhone uses a customized version of the Android operating system produced by Google.[1].
Lenovo invested 100 million yuan in a fund dedicated to providing seed funding for mobile application development for its LeGarden online app store. As of 2010, LeGarden had more than 1,000 programs available for download to users of the LePhone. At the same time, LeGarden counted 2,774 individual developers and 542 developer companies as members.[2].
The LePhone supports the GSM standard, China's indigenous TD-SCDMA 3G standard used by China Mobile, the WCDMA 3G standard used by China Unicom, and China Telecom's CDMA 2000 network.[3][4][5]
The "Le" series of devices, including the LePhone, LePad, and the LeTV are sold under the "idea" brand outside of China. The LePhone is thus known as the "ideaphone" in other markets. The "Le" pre-fix means "happy" in Mandarin Chinese and this branding is only used in Mainland China. [6]