Lenovo - Bigger Than You Know

TL;DR

Lenovo grew from a $25,000 Chinese government investment into the world's largest PC maker by acquiring iconic American brands like IBM and Motorola.

Key Points

• 1.Lenovo originated as a Chinese government-funded startup in 1984. The Chinese Academy of Sciences invested ~$25,000 to create Legend Group, which began in a two-room guardhouse in Beijing before becoming China's top PC seller by 1997.
• 2.The 2004 IBM PC acquisition was the defining move that made Lenovo global. The $1.75 billion deal combined Lenovo's $3B China PC business with IBM's $9B worldwide business, instantly quadrupling their size and granting them the credible ThinkPad brand.
• 3.Lenovo became the world's #1 PC maker in 2013 and still holds that position. They account for roughly a quarter of all PCs sold globally, surpassing HP — a lead originally built from HP's own 2001 Compaq acquisition.
• 4.Lenovo expanded into servers by acquiring IBM's x86 server business for $2B in 2014. This raised their server market share from 2% to 14%, and infrastructure solutions now represent nearly 20% of total revenue.
• 5.The 2014 Motorola Mobility acquisition for ~$3B gave Lenovo a foothold in global smartphones. Google sold Motorola to Lenovo after buying it in 2011; Lenovo now claims #4 globally (ex-China) and #3 in the US, though far behind Apple and Samsung.