As if the mobile market wasn’t crowded and vicious enough already, it looks like we could soon have another major player step into what is tech’s toughest arena. Lenovo, the second-biggest PC maker in the world, has just revealed its plans to dump its smartphones on the US market, with the first handsets likely to arrive within the next 12 months.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing described the US mobile market as the next frontier for his company. “Smartphones are our new opportunity. As a public company you always have to consider how to grow” said Yang, whose company has defied the worldwide slump in PC sales with consistent growth while its US rivals flounder.

Moving into the US would seem to be the logical next step for Lenovo, which is already the second-largest smartphone maker in China with an 11.4% market share, according to the research firm IDC. This puts Lenovo ahead of Apple, with only Samsung and its 17.4% market share standing in its way. We’ve already seen Lenovo make its first tentative steps in this direction, launching smartphones in markets like Russia and India, though its so far avoided the more competitive battlegrounds of the US and Europe.

Lenovo’s smartphone sales have seen dramatic growth in the last few months – shipments over the first quarter were reportedly more than double those of the year before. Nevertheless, Yang is the first to acknowledge that the company will find it tough to replicate its success in the US. Before it can even think about catching the likes of Apple and Samsung, it’ll need to address the problem of providers. To this end, Lenovo has reportedly been considering potential acquisitions with Blackberry apparently high on its wish-list, although it hasn’t made any concrete decisions so far.

Aside from the supply problems, Lenovo will also need to work hard to boost its image. While the brand is quite well respected among geeks for its superb ThinkPad laptops, it’s not nearly as recognizable with the average consumer. Yang seems to appreciate this, saying that the smartphone market is much “like the fashion industry”, with glitzy brands like Samsung and Apple going hell for leather to outdo each other in their marketing campaigns.

The US will be a huge challenge no doubt, but Yang seems confident that it’s one the company can overcome. “We know the importance of marketing, we will strengthen that,” he told the WSJ.