Lenovo recently marked the 10 years of its acquisition of IBM’s PC 
business, which is a major milestone in its evolution from a Chinese-based PC maker to a global IT firm.
Reel back to 2005, Lenovo, China’s leading PC vendor, with very little presence worldwide (2.3 percent market share), had annual revenue of about $3 billion. In May that year when IBM announced it was selling its massive PC business to Lenovo for $1.25 billion, the deal instantly propelled Lenovo into the worldwide PC scene.
Notably, the IBM PC acquisition and its growth gave Lenovo the fuel to accelerate its expansion which today encompasses three growth engines with global scale: PC, mobile and enterprise.
Following the successful IBM PC acquisition, Lenovo has made eight successful acquisitions, priming the company for future advances in high-growth and high-revenue markets.
Fast forward to 2015 and Lenovo has risen to become the number one in worldwide PCs with market share at 20% and revenue growing roughly thirteen-fold over the past ten years to $39 billion.
“The acquisition of IBM’s PC business transformed Lenovo overnight into a truly global company, changing not only Lenovo but our industry,” Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing said in a statement.
“Even more, this acquisition built the foundation for our expansion to new products like smartphones, tablets, servers and now our ecosystem, growth engines fueled by the success of our first big deal.”
William O. Grabe, advisory director, General Atlantic, and Lenovo board member believes Lenovo‘s decade of success was achieved through a continued focus on profitable growth, strong execution by the Lenovo leadership team led by Yang Yuanqing, and the hard work of the tens of thousands of Lenovo employees around-the-world. I look forward to Lenovo’s next decade of growth.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the defining moments in Lenovo’s history over the past ten years:
- 100 million ThinkPad laptops sold (2015)
- the acquisition of Motorola Mobility and IBM X86 businesses and launched multimode YOGA Tablet 2 Pro with built-in projector (2014)
- Became #1 PC-maker worldwide; started selling smartphones outside of China; and introduced interpersonal computing with Horizon table PC (2013)
- Launched YOGA multimode PC (2012)
- Entered into JV with EMC and acquired Stoneware and CCE (2012)
- Created JV with NEC and Compal and acquired Medion (2011)
- Sponsored Beijing Olympics delivering 20,000 pieces of infrastructure and hardware; entered global consumer laptop and desktop markets; built ThinkPad X300, which BusinessWeek called “the best laptop ever” (2008)
- Launched first Lenovo-branded PCs worldwide (2006)
- Acquired IBM’s PC business, including ThinkPad (2005)
Since completing its acquisition of IBM’s PC business, Lenovo has invested heavily in research and development, leading to the expansion of the Think brand into new product categories such as workstations and servers as well as new commercial designs and innovations including tablets and convertibles. Also during this time period, Think-branded products have won more than 2,600 design and product awards, said a company statement.
