Lenovo

Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo (/lɛˈnoʊvoʊ/ leh-NOH-voh), is a Chinese multinational technology company with headquarters in Beijing, China. It designs, develops, manufactures, and sells personal computers, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, electronic storage devices, IT management software, and smart televisions. Lenovo is the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales, as of March 2019. It markets the ThinkPad and ThinkBook business lines of notebook computers, IdeaPad, Yoga and Legion consumer lines of notebook laptops, and the IdeaCentre and ThinkCentre lines of desktops.

Lenovo has operations in more than 60 countries and sells its products in around 160 countries. Lenovo's principal facilities are in Beijing and Morrisville, with research centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Chengdu, Nanjing, and Wuhan in China, Yamato in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, and Morrisville in the U.S. It also has a joint venture with NEC, Lenovo NEC Holdings, which produces personal computers for the Japanese market.

Lenovo was founded in Beijing in November 1984 as Legend and was incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988. Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based server business in 2014. Lenovo entered the smartphone market in 2012 and as of 2014 was the largest vendor of smartphones in Mainland China. In 2014, Lenovo acquired the mobile phone handset maker Motorola Mobility from Google.

Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Hang Seng China-Affiliated Corporations Index, often referred to as "Red Chips".

History

Founding and early history

Liu Chuanzhi founded Lenovo on 1 November 1984 with a group of ten engineers in Beijing with 200,000 yuan. The Chinese government approved Lenovo's incorporation on the same day. Jiǎ Xùfú (贾续福), one of the founders of Lenovo, indicates the first meeting in preparation for starting the company was held on 17 October of the same year. Eleven people, the entirety of the initial staff, attended. Each of the founders was a middle-aged member of the Institute of Computing Technology attached to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The 200,000 yuan used as start-up capital was approved by Zēng Màocháo (曾茂朝). The name for the company agreed upon at this meeting was the Chinese Academy of Sciences Computer Technology Research Institute New Technology Development Company.^[5]

Their first significant effort, an attempt to import televisions, failed. The group rebuilt itself within a year by conducting quality checks on computers for new buyers. Lenovo soon started developing a circuit board that would allow IBM-compatible personal computers to process Chinese characters. This product was Lenovo's first major success. Lenovo also tried and failed to market a digital watch. Liu said, "Our management team often differed on which commercial road to travel. This led to big discussions, especially between the engineering chief and myself. He felt that if the quality of the product was good, then it would sell itself. But I knew this was not true, that marketing and other factors were part of the eventual success of a product." The fact that its staff had little business experience compounded Lenovo's early difficulties. "We were mainly scientists and didn't understand the market", Liu said. "We just learned by trial-and-error, which was very interesting—but also very dangerous", said Liu. In 1990, Lenovo started to manufacture and market computers using its own brand name.^[6]

In May 1988, Lenovo placed its first recruitment advertisement. The ad was placed on the front page of the China Youth News. Such ads were quite rare in China then. Out of the 500 respondents, 280 were selected to take a written employment exam. 120 of these candidates were interviewed in person. Although interviewers initially only had authority to hire 16 people, 58 were given offers. The new staff included 18 people with graduate degrees, 37 with undergraduate degrees, and three students with no university-level education. Their average age was 26. Yang Yuanqing, the current CEO of Lenovo, was among that group.^[5]

Liu Chuanzhi received government permission to form a subsidiary in Hong Kong and to move there along with five other employees. Liu's father, already in Hong Kong, furthered his son's ambitions through mentoring and facilitating loans. Liu moved to Hong Kong in 1988. To save money during this period, Liu and his co-workers walked instead of taking public transportation. To keep up appearances, they rented hotel rooms for meetings.^[5]