LENOVO Group Ltd. is adding experimental technologies to its smartphones in a bid to grow its business, trying to overcome declining personal computer shipments and a competitive mobile market.

    The Beijing-based company Friday unveiled the first smartphone based on Google’s Project Tango, a technology designed to measure and map surrounding objects and spaces.

    The firm also announced an initiative to deliver a new line of modular smartphones, stemming from its 2014 purchase of Motorola Mobility. Lenovo unveiled new Moto Z handsets that will feature interchangeable snap-on modules, starting with an extra speaker, a projector for presentations and an expanded internal battery.

    Lenovo said it hoped to spur other companies to offer many new “Moto Mods,” as the company calls them.

    Lenovo, which has been battling market share losses and other problems in the smartphone business, is hoping the new models will stand out in a crowded field of products that look and work largely the same.

    At an event in San Francisco, the company also announced a partnership with networking vendor Juniper Networks to extend its data center unit.

    “Over the past two years, Lenovo has been transforming, making major acquisitions in mobile and infrastructure to expand beyond our core PC business,” said Yang Yuanqing, the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer. “I was told we’d better launch something pretty exciting.” He said the new products “have created a new era for the smartphone and Lenovo.”

    Lenovo is looking to phones for growth to offset a struggling PC market. Lenovo was the largest single vendor of PC shipments in the world in the first quarter of 2016, according to IDC, but shipments declined 8.5 percent on a year earlier. The company acquired the Motorola smartphone business for US$2.8 billion in 2014 to help it hedge against this weakness, but turning those phones into major sales has proven to be a challenge.

    Lenovo faces an uphill battle trying to regain its share of the mobile phone market against renewed competition from local rivals like Huawei Technologies Co. Its smartphone sales in China fell 85 percent compared with a year earlier, Jenny Lai, an analyst at HSBC, wrote in a note to clients following Lenovo’s fourth-quarter results in May.

    Lenovo reported a full-year loss of US$128 million compared with net income of US$829 million a year earlier.

    “Lenovo will step up its mobile investments in order to achieve targets,” she said. “Financial year 2017 will be a transitional year for Lenovo with flat shipments and continued operating losses in mobile business.”

    To boost sales, Lenovo is turning to new technologies. The company will release a phone called the Phab2 Pro in September that uses technology from Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Google called Tango. The system lets the phone host augmented reality applications, like software to help people navigate the world, play virtual domino and dinosaur games, easily measure spaces in households and add in three-dimensional models of furniture.

    With the Phab2 Pro, Lenovo will be the first company to field augmented reality technology on smartphones without the need of a headset, separate device or attachment to a powerful computer. The cost of the Phab2 Pro will start at US$499.

    “Lenovo is creating a new kind of augmented reality experience that is more portable, more practical, and will be even more popular,” Yang said.

    (SD-Agencies)