Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo, is a Chinesemultinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, business solutions, and related services. Products manufactured by the company include desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, supercomputers, electronic storage devices, IT management software, and smart televisions. Its best-known brands include its ThinkPad business line of laptop computers (acquired from IBM), the IdeaPad, Yoga, and Legion consumer lines of laptop computers, and the IdeaCentre and ThinkCentre lines of desktop computers. As of 2021, Lenovo is the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales.
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. Lenovo grew to become the market leader in China and raised nearly US$30 million in an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Since the 1990s, Lenovo has increasingly diversified from the personal computer market and made a number of corporate acquisitions, with the most notable being acquiring and integrating most of IBM's personal computer business and its x86-based server business as well as creating its own smartphone.
Lenovo has operations in over 60 countries and sells its products in around 180 countries.[citation needed] It was incorporated in Hong Kong, with global headquarters in Beijing, and operational centres in Singapore and Morrisville, North Carolina, US. It has research centres in Beijing, Chengdu, Yamato (Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan), Singapore, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Morrisville, and also has Lenovo NEC Holdings, a joint venture with NEC that produces personal computers for the Japanese market.