# Lenovo

> The Chinese company that sells more PCs than anyone, from ThinkPads to Motorola phones.

- Level: Basic
- Topics: Tech companies, Hardware
- URL: https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/lenovo/
- In Spanish: [Lenovo](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/es/lenovo/)

**Lenovo** is a Chinese technology company founded in Beijing in 1984, under the name Legend, by a group of engineers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences led by Liu Chuanzhi. It started as a distributor and became China's largest PC maker in the 1990s. Today it has headquarters in Beijing and in Morrisville, North Carolina, and its shares trade in Hong Kong.

Its global turning point came in 2005, when it bought IBM's personal computer business, including the **ThinkPad**, the black business laptop with the red dot in the middle of the keyboard. In 2014 it bought IBM's x86 server business and Motorola's phone business from Google, which is why the Motorola phones sold across Latin America are made by Lenovo.

It has been the world's largest PC maker by units shipped for most years since 2013, selling laptops and desktops under the ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, IdeaPad, Yoga and Legion brands, plus tablets, monitors and data center servers. It mostly uses processors from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm, and builds much of its hardware in its own factories.

## An analogy

A company that bought a famous foreign brand to go global, the way a local family business might buy a well-known label and then grow it into the biggest in its trade.

## Keep in mind

- Founded in Beijing in 1984 as Legend.
- Bought IBM's PC business, and the ThinkPad, in 2005.
- Owns Motorola's phone business since 2014.
- The world's largest PC maker by units in most recent years.

## Go deeper

- [Lenovo (official site)](https://www.lenovo.com/)
- [About Lenovo](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/about/)
- [Lenovo on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo)

## Related terms

- [IBM](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/ibm/): A century-old computer company that sells software, consulting and mainframes.
- [Laptop](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/laptop/): A whole computer folded into one portable case that runs on a battery.
- [Instruction set architecture](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/instruction-set-architecture/): The vocabulary of basic commands a processor understands, like x86, ARM or RISC-V.
- [Server](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/server/): A computer whose job is to answer requests from other computers, all day, every day.
- [Google](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/google/): The search company that gives most products away and makes its money on ads.
- [Tablet](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/tablet/): A computer that is just a big touchscreen, between a phone and a laptop.
- [Data center](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/data-center/): A building full of servers where the internet, the cloud and AI actually run.
- [Intel](https://tidbit.legios.com.ar/intel/): The American company behind most PC and server processors for decades.