Lenovo is to sell it mobile phone division to a number of private equity firms for $100m. Lenovo may not be well known for mobile phones outside China (where it is the number 4 handset manufacturer), but trivia buffs may remember its early (now defunct) association with S60. It became the sixth licensee of S60 in 2004 and released the P930 S60 handset in 2005.

The P930 was notable for it support for handwriting recognition via stylus input. Lenovo has not been active in the S60 space for some time. Its mobile phone division has faced increasing competition from Nokia, Motorola and Samsung as they expanded their activities in China. The division made up around 2% of Lenovo's overall business.

S60 licensees have not had the best track record. Siemens sold its mobile unit to Benq which then imploded, Sendo released one handset and was on the verge of releasing the impressive X2 when it went bust, Panasonic failed to find success with the X700 and X800 and switched to its attention to Linux as a software platform (without much success).

Outside of Nokia only Samsung and LG are left after the heady licensee days of 2004. The main issue is that gaining the necessary competence to roll out families of S60 devices (with the associated cost savings) proved to be more time consuming and expensive that was initially anticipated. Only Samsung (i450, i550, i560) and Nokia (several: e.g. 6110, 6120, 6290) are in a position to take full advantage of the economics offered by rolling out families of S60 devices based around a single reference device / platform.