Who's going to pick BlackBerry?

Bryan Wang, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc, said Lenovo started to talk to BlackBerry executives at least a couple of months ago.

"This deal makes good sense for Lenovo and is critical for Lenovo to execute its strategy in the post-PC era," said Wang. BlackBerry's design ability, good relationship with telecom operators plus its strength in the enterprise smartphone segment will boost Lenovo's smartphone unit globally, he added.

The company's major overseas smartphone markets include India, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

However, there were concerns from day one that the Canadian and US governments may block a Chinese company buying BlackBerry, Wang warned. Western countries tend to deny Chinese IT companies' acquisition requests because of "security concerns", he said.

"Because BlackBerry's biggest customers are enterprises, financial institutions and government organizations, potential buyers from any nation should have a similar profile to BlackBerry in this sector and be trusted by their customers, who have high-level security requirements," said Peng.

"Therefore there is added difficulty and complexity when BlackBerry is searching for the right buyer."

Huawei may benefit from the BlackBerry patents, but the price tag might be too high for the telecom equipment maker based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, to take over the whole company. The security issue is even more serious for Huawei, according to Wang from Forrester.

Both Lenovo and Huawei started vigorously tapping into the smartphone market this year.

The companies launched their own flagship gadgets in May and June, targeting high-end users.

Lenovo now terms itself the biggest local smartphone maker in terms of shipments. It plans to sell 100 million terminals - including smartphones and tablets - before the end of this year.

South Korean smartphone giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd was the biggest vendor in China, taking nearly 20 percent of the market share, while Lenovo and Huawei each took about 10 percent, said industry research firm Strategy Analytics.