Lenovo on Thursday launched a new campaign in the United States, hoping to change people's minds about buying an Apple iPhone 7 or the Samsung Galaxy Note7. The company (which bought Motorola in 2014) put out a front-page advertisement in The New York Times, asking people to “skip the sevens” in favour of its Moto Z. It also put up a video where it tricks a group of “Apple loyalists” into raving about its “Moto Mods” – hardware add-ons for the Moto Z.

The video shows a focus group of Apple enthusiasts making non-committal comments about the new iPhone 7. They're then presented with the new features of the Moto Z but made to believe it is still the Apple smartphone. “They’ve been doing some work,” one of the group members says of Moto, after the big reveal is made. Lenovo claims the people in the ad were not actors.

The tongue-in-cheek print ad says the iPhone “changed everything...But that was nine years ago”. It then criticises “incremental improvements” in the smartphone industry, before claiming Lenovo has “reimagined what the smartphone can be”. The marketing push comes weeks after Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus launch and while Samsung deals with a global recall of their Galaxy Note7 handset following reports of its batteries exploding.

Apple held 43% of the smartphone market share in the US as of January this year, according to analytics firm comScore, whereas Motorola had only 5%. Motorola also trailed behind Samsung, which accounted for 28.5% of the subscriber base in the country. Another report found that of all the consumers in the US who plan to upgrade their phones, 40% prefer Apple and 35% Samsung, while merely 6% prefer Motorola.

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