Personal Computer manufacturer Lenovo Group Ltd. has reportedly said that it will be spending $800 million on a brand new research, development and production center for smartphones and tablets in China in order to expand beyond its PC business and become more competitive in the mobile device market.

The company broke ground on Monday at the new facility in Wuhan in the Hubei province, which it has said is expected to begin production in October 2013.

The company has also mentioned that the new facitlity will contribute to the creation of about 10, 000 jobs over the next few years of which several thousand employees will focus mainly on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices for China and global markets.

Lenovo also revealed that sales from the industrial base were projected to reach 10 billion yuan by 2014, and to rise to 50 billion yuan within the next five years.

Lenovo Group chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing explains that “We are aggressively moving forward into the PC Plus era  and are accelerating development in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile Internet terminal markets. We’re determined to firmly seize the tremendous opportunities for innovation in this market, so that Lenovo’s customers have even more opportunities to own our award-winning products, from PCs to mobile Internet devices.”

Lenovo has selected China as the first market for its upcoming K800 mobile device, a 1.6GHz Intel Medfield-based smartphone due to launch in the second quarter of 2012.

In April, Lenovo revealed its IdeaTab S2109 Android tablet.

Source: The Next Web