Lenovo

Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( lə-NOH-voh, Chinese: 联想; pinyin: Liánxiǎng), is a Hong Kong–based Chinese multinational corporation and technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, converged and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and related services. Its smartphone brand is Motorola. Its global headquarters are in Beijing, China, and Morrisville, North Carolina, in the United States; it has research centers at these locations, elsewhere in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, in Stuttgart, Germany, and in Yamato, Kanagawa, Japan. Lenovo originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research institute. Then known as Legend and distributing foreign IT products, co-founder Liu Chuanzhi incorporated Legend in Hong Kong in an attempt to raise capital and was successfully permitted to build computers in China, helped by the American company AST Research. Legend listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1994 and became the largest PC manufacturer in China and eventually in Asia; they were also domestic distributors for HP printers, Toshiba laptops, and others. After the company rebranded itself to Lenovo, it merged with IBM's PC business which produced its ThinkPad line in 2005, after which it rapidly expanded abroad. In 2013, Lenovo became the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales for the first time, a position it still holds as of 2024. Products manufactured by the company include desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, supercomputers, data storage devices, IT management software, and smart televisions. Its best-known brands include its ThinkPad business line of notebooks, the IdeaPad, Yoga, LOQ, and Legion consumer lines of notebooks, and the IdeaCentre, LOQ, Legion, and ThinkCentre lines of desktops. Lenovo is also part of a joint venture with NEC, named Lenovo NEC Holdings, that produces personal computers for the Japanese market. The company also operates Motorola Mobility, which produces smartphones.

Etymology

"Lenovo" is a portmanteau of "Le-" (from Legend) and "novo", Latin ablative for "new". The Chinese name (simplified Chinese: 联想; traditional Chinese: 聯想; pinyin: ) means "association" (as in "association of ideas"), "associative thinking", or "connected thinking". It also implies creativity. "Lianxiang" was first used to refer to a layout of Chinese typewriters in the 1950s organized into groups of common words and phrases rather than the standard dictionary layout. For the first 20 years of its existence, the company's English name was "Legend". In 2002, Yang Yuanqing decided to abandon the Legend English name to expand beyond the Chinese home market. "Legend" was already in use worldwide by many businesses, making it impossible to register in many jurisdictions outside China. In April 2003, the company publicly announced its new English name, "Lenovo", with an advertising campaign including huge billboards and primetime television ads. Lenovo spent 18 million CNY on an eight-week television advertising campaign. The billboards showed the Lenovo logo against blue sky with a slogan that read, "Transcendence depends on how you think." By the end of 2003, Lenovo had spent a total of 200 million CNY on rebranding.

History

1984–1993: Founding and early history Lenovo was founded in Beijing on 1 November 1984 as Legend by a team of engineers led by Liu Chuanzhi and Danny Lui. Initially specializing in televisions, the company migrated towards manufacturing and marketing computers. Liu Chuanzhi and his group of ten experienced engineers, teaming up with Danny Lui, officially founded Lenovo in Beijing on 1 November 1984, with 200,000 yuan. The Chinese government approved Lenovo's incorporation on the same day. Jia Xufu (贾续福), one of the founders of Lenovo, indicated that the first meeting in preparation for starting the company was held on 17 October the same year. Eleven people, the entirety of the initial staff, attended. Each of the founders was a member of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The 200,000 yuan used as start-up capital was approved by Zeng Maochao (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. The organizational structure of the company was established in 1985 after the Chinese New Year. It included technology, engineering, administrative, and office departments. The group first attempted to import televisions but failed. It rebuilt itself as a company doing quality checks on computers. It also tried and failed to market a digital watch.

In May 1988, Lenovo placed its first recruitment advertisement on the front page of the China Youth News. Such ads were quite rare in China at the time. 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 the 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. Yang Yuanqing, the current chairman and CEO of Lenovo, was among that group. 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 along with Lui, furthered his son's ambitions through mentoring and facilitating loans. Liu moved to Hong Kong in 1987. 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. In 1990, Lenovo started to manufacture and market computers using its own brand name. Some of the company's early successes included the KT8920 mainframe computer. It also developed a circuit board that allowed IBM-compatible personal computers to process Chinese characters.

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