ThinkLight was a keyboard light present on many older ThinkPad families of notebook computers .
93-461: The series was originally designed by IBM , and then developed and produced by Lenovo since 2005. The ThinkLight has been replaced by a backlight keyboard on later generations of ThinkPads, and Lenovo has discontinued the ThinkLight in 2013. A white or amber LED (depending on model) is located on the top edge of the display , illuminating the keyboard to allow use in low-light conditions. It
186-401: A UPS to handle electrical disturbances like short interruptions, blackouts, and spikes; achieving an on-battery time of more than 20–30 minutes for a desktop PC requires a large and expensive UPS. A laptop with a sufficiently charged battery can continue to be used for hours in case of a power outage and is not affected by short power interruptions and blackouts. A desktop computer often has
279-475: A microprocessor as the central processing unit , memory , bus , certain peripherals and other electronic components), disk storage (usually one or more hard disk drives , solid-state drives , optical disc drives , and in early models floppy disk drives ); a keyboard and mouse for input ; and a monitor , speakers , and, often, a printer for output. The case may be oriented horizontally or vertically and placed either underneath, beside, or on top of
372-834: A tower is a form factor of desktop computer case whose height is much greater than its width, thus having the appearance of an upstanding tower block . In computing , a pizza box enclosure is a design for desktop computers. Pizza box cases tend to be wide and flat, resembling pizza delivery boxes and thus the name. Cube Workstations have a cube case enclosure to house the motherboard , PCI-E expansion cards, GPU , CPU , DRAM DIMM slots, computer cooling equipment, chipsets , I / O ports, hard disk drives , and solid-state drives . Gaming computers are desktop computers with high performance CPU , GPU , and RAM optimized for playing video games at high resolution and frame rates . Gaming computer peripheries usually include mechanical keyboards for faster response time, and
465-484: A 5% share. Lenovo and NEC also agreed to explore cooperating in other areas such as servers and tablet computers. Roderick Lappin, chairman of the Lenovo–NEC joint venture, told the press that the two companies will expand their co-operation to include the development of tablet computers. In June 2011, Lenovo announced that it planned to acquire control of Medion , a German electronics manufacturing company. Lenovo said
558-618: A Mac, with the exception of the even more inexpensive Mac Mini (albeit without a monitor and keyboard), and the MacBooks are the top-selling form factors of the Macintosh platform today. The decades of development mean that most people already own desktop computers that meet their needs and have no need of buying a new one merely to keep pace with advancing technology. Notably, the successive release of new versions of Windows (Windows 95, 98, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and so on) had been drivers for
651-437: A built-in keyboard and a pointing device (such as a touchpad ) for its user and can draw on power supplied by a rechargeable battery. Laptops also commonly integrate wireless technologies like Wi-Fi , Bluetooth , and 3G , giving them a broader range of options for connecting to the internet, though this trend is changing as newer desktop computers come integrated with one or more of these technologies. A desktop computer needs
744-579: A change in typography or the look of the logo. We asked 'If we really are a net-driven, customer-centric company, what should the logo look like?' We came up with the idea of a digital logo first [...] designed to be used on the internet and adaptable to context." In early June 2015, Lenovo announced plans to sell up to US$ 650 million in five-year bonds denominated in Chinese yuan. The bonds were sold in Hong Kong with coupon ranging from 4.95% to 5.05%. This
837-477: A closer relationship with Intel, the maker of most server processors, through its acquisition of IBM's x86-based server business. On 1 October 2014, Lenovo closed its acquisition of IBM's server division, with the final price put at $ 2.1 billion. Lenovo said this acquisition came in at a price lower than the previously announced $ 2.3 billion partially because of a change in the value of IBM inventories. The deal has been already approved by Europe and China. Per Forbes,
930-546: 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
1023-549: A decline in sales, in 2018, global PC sales experienced a resurgence, driven by the business market. Desktops remain a solid fixture in the commercial and educational sectors. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) , PC sales shot up 14.8% between 2020 and 2021 and desktop market grew faster than the laptop market in the second quarter of 2021. Total PC shipments during 2021 reached 348.8 million units, up 14.8% from 2020. This represents
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#17327931404341116-420: A desk. Desktop computers with their cases oriented vertically are referred to as towers . As the majority of cases offered since the mid-1990s are in this form factor, the term desktop has been retronymically used to refer to modern cases offered in the traditional horizontal orientation. Prior to the widespread use of microprocessors , a computer that could fit on a desk was considered remarkably small;
1209-463: A fairly large desk, not put on top of it. It was not until the 1970s when fully programmable computers appeared that could fit entirely on top of a desk. 1970 saw the introduction of the Datapoint 2200 , a "smart" computer terminal complete with keyboard and monitor, was designed to connect with a mainframe computer but that did not stop owners from using its built-in computational abilities as
1302-490: A final sale in 2011 completing their divestment. Mary Ma , Lenovo's chief financial officer from 1990 to 2007, was in charge of investor relations. Under her leadership, Lenovo successfully integrated Western-style accountability into its corporate culture. Lenovo's emphasis on transparency earned it a reputation for the best corporate governance among mainland Chinese firms. While Hong Kong-listed firms were only required to issue financial reports twice per year, Lenovo followed
1395-431: A gaming computer mouse which can track higher dots per inch movement. These desktops are connected to home entertainment systems and typically used for amusement purpose. They come with high definition display, video graphics, surround sound and TV tuner systems to complement typical PC features. Over time some traditional desktop computers have been replaced with thin clients utilizing off-site computing solutions like
1488-694: A governmental research institute. Then known as Legend, the company developed numerous electronics before focusing on personal computers. Co-founder Liu Chuanzhi incorporated Legend in Hong Kong in an attempt to raise capital and was successfully permitted to build computers in China. It 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
1581-618: A growth of 33% compared to 2006. In 2008, it was estimated that 145.9 million notebooks were sold and that the number would grow in 2009 to 177.7 million. The third quarter of 2008 was the first time when worldwide notebook PC shipments exceeded desktops, with 38.6 million units versus 38.5 million units. The sales breakdown of the Apple Macintosh has seen sales of desktop Macs staying mostly constant while being surpassed by that of Mac notebooks whose sales rate has grown considerably; seven out of ten Macs sold were laptops in 2009,
1674-717: A joint venture with Fujitsu and the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ). In the joint venture, Fujitsu would sell Lenovo a 51% stake in Fujitsu Client Computing Limited . DBJ would acquire a 5% stake. In September 2018, Lenovo and NetApp announced about strategic partnership and joint venture in China. As part of strategic partnership Lenovo started two new lines of storage systems: DM-Series and DE-Series. Both storage systems using Lenovo hardware and NetApp software: DM-Series using ONTAP OS and DE-Series SANtricity OS. In 2018, Lenovo became
1767-411: A light on and a light off indicator. The ThinkLight can be activated when the monitor is on or off but not while the computer is off. Some ThinkPads, like the Z and R series (though not all - some R61 and R32 models still have the white light) feature an amber LED due to the lower cost, while other models, like the T series, use a white LED (which is generally preferred). The G series and SL series omit
1860-547: A new logo at Lenovo Tech World in Beijing, with the slogan "Innovation Never Stands Still" ( Chinese : 创新无止境 ). Lenovo's new logo, created by Saatchi, can be changed by its advertising agencies and sales partners, within restrictions, to fit the context. It has a lounging "e" and is surrounded by a box that can be changed to use a relevant scene, solid color, or photograph. Lenovo's Chief Marketing Officer David Roman said, "When we first started looking at it, it wasn't about just
1953-570: A ratio projected to rise to three out of four by 2010. The change in sales of form factors is due to the desktop iMac moving from affordable G3 to upscale G4 model and subsequent releases are considered premium all-in-ones. By contrast, the MSRP of the MacBook laptop lines have dropped through successive generations such that the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro constitute the lowest price of entry to
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#17327931404342046-399: A second or third PC in the household that would have performed these tasks, though most families still retain a powerful PC for serious work. Among PC form factors, desktops remain a staple in the enterprise market but lost popularity among home buyers. PC makers and electronics retailers responded by investing their engineering and marketing resources towards laptops (initially netbooks in
2139-617: A server. Thin client computers may do almost all of their computing on a virtual machine in another site. Internal, hosted virtual desktops can offer users a completely consistent experience from anywhere. Workstations are advanced class of personal computers designed for a user and more powerful than a regular PC but less powerful than a server in regular computing. They are capable of high-resolution and three-dimensional interfaces, and typically used to perform scientific and engineering work. Like server computers, they are often connected with other workstations. The main form-factor for this class
2232-504: A small CRT display and could be programmed in BASIC and APL . These were generally expensive specialized computers sold for business or scientific uses. Apple II , TRS-80 and Commodore PET were first generation personal home computers launched in 1977, which were aimed at the consumer market – rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. Byte magazine referred to these three as the "1977 Trinity" of personal computing. Throughout
2325-478: A stand-alone desktop computer. The HP 9800 series , which started out as programmable calculators in 1971 but was programmable in BASIC by 1972, used a smaller version of a minicomputer design based on ROM memory and had small one-line LED alphanumeric displays and displayed graphics with a plotter. The Wang 2200 of 1973 had a full-size cathode-ray tube (CRT) and cassette tape storage. The IBM 5100 in 1975 had
2418-435: 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 November 1, 1984, with 200,000 yuan . The Chinese government approved Lenovo's incorporation on the same day. Jia Xufu (贾续福), one of
2511-443: A tower case) in order to run these applications, though this has slowed since the late 2000s as the growing popularity of Intel integrated graphics forced game developers to scale back. Creative Technology 's Sound Blaster series were a de facto standard for sound cards in desktop PCs during the 1990s until the early 2000s, when they were reduced to a niche product, as OEM desktop PCs came with sound boards integrated directly onto
2604-613: Is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics , personal computers , software, business solutions, and related services. Its global headquarters are in Beijing , and Morrisville, North Carolina , United States; it has research centers at these locations, elsewhere in China, in Stuttgart, Germany , and in Yamato, Japan . Lenovo originated as an offshot of
2697-490: Is a Tower case, but most vendors produce compact or all-in-one low-end workstations. Most tower workstations can be converted to a rack-mount version. Oriented for small business class of servers; typically entry-level server machines, with similar to workstation/gaming PC computing powers and with some mainstream servers features, but with only basic graphic abilities; and some desktop servers can be converted to workstations. Desktops have an advantage over laptops in that
2790-548: Is a manufacturer of personal computers, smartphones, televisions, and wearable devices. Some of the company's earliest products included the KT8920 mainframe computer and a circuit board that allowed IBM-compatible personal computers to process Chinese characters. One of its first computers was the Tianxi ( 天禧 ), released in 1998 in the Chinese market. It became the best selling computer in Chinese history in 2000. Lenovo markets
2883-453: Is a notable example of a compact desktop. A laptop without a screen can functionally be used as a compact desktop, sometimes called a "slabtop". An all-in-one (AIO) desktop computer integrates the system's internal components into the same case as the display, thus occupying a smaller footprint (with fewer cables) than desktops that incorporate a tower. The All-in-one systems are rarely labeled as desktop computers. In personal computing ,
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2976-513: Is activated with the key combination Fn-PgUp (the bottom left and top right keys of the keyboard). Later ThinkPads use the combination Fn-Space instead. Lenovo later started to include backlit keyboards, and some models included both the ThinkLight and a backlit keyboard. For those models, the Fn-Space shortcut is also used in conjunction to control a backlit keyboard (if the laptop has it). The on-screen display of ThinkPad computers will display
3069-506: Is not expected to significantly affect earnings. More specifically, Stoneware was acquired to further Lenovo's efforts to improve and expand its cloud-computing services. For the two years prior to its acquisition, Stoneware partnered with Lenovo to sell its software. During this period Stoneware's sales doubled. Stoneware was founded in 2000. As of September 2012, Stoneware is based in Carmel, Indiana, and has 67 employees. Lenovo re-entered
3162-501: Is only the second sale of bonds in Lenovo's history. Financial commentators noted that Lenovo was paying a premium to list the bonds in yuan given relatively low costs for borrowing in US dollars. Lenovo said that its x86 servers will be available to all its channel partners. Lenovo plans to cut prices on x86 products in order to gain market share. This goes in alliance with IBM 's vision of
3255-472: Is quite rare. Compact desktops are reduced in physical proportions compared to full-sized desktops. They are typically small-sized, inexpensive, low-power computers designed for basic tasks such as web browsing , accessing web-based applications , document processing, and audio/video playback. Hardware specifications and processing power are usually reduced and hence make them less appropriate for running complex or resource-intensive applications . A nettop
3348-481: Is still most popular on desktops (and laptops), while smartphones (and tablets) use Android or iOS . Towards the middle of the 2010s, media sources began to question the existence of the post-PC trend, at least as conventionally defined, stating that the so-called post-PC devices are just other portable forms of PCs joining traditional desktop PCs which still have their own operation areas and evolve. Although for casual use traditional desktops and laptops have seen
3441-588: 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 produced smartphones. Lenovo was founded in Beijing on 1 November 1984 as Legend by
3534-792: The Moto X , Moto G , Droid Turbo , and the future Motorola Mobility product roadmap, while Google retained the Advanced Technologies & Projects unit and all but 2,000 of the company's patents. Lenovo received royalty free licenses to all the patents retained by Google. Lenovo received approval from the European Union for its acquisition of Motorola in June 2014. The acquisition was completed on 30 October 2014. Motorola Mobility remained headquartered in Chicago, and continued to use
3627-463: The ThinkPad , IdeaPad , Yoga , Legion and Xiaoxin ( 小新 ; Chinese market only) lines of laptops, as well as the IdeaCentre and ThinkCentre lines of desktops. It expanded significantly in 2005 through its acquisition of IBM 's personal computer business, including its ThinkPad and ThinkCentre lines. As of January 2013, shipments of THINK-branded computers have doubled since Lenovo's takeover of
3720-462: The 1980s and 1990s, desktop computers became the predominant type, the most popular being the IBM PC and its clones , followed by the Apple Macintosh , with the third-placed Commodore Amiga having some success in the mid-1980s but declining by the early 1990s. Early personal computers , like the original IBM Personal Computer , were enclosed in a " desktop case ", horizontally oriented to have
3813-637: The Hong Kong market in March 2000 and raised about US$ 212 million . It rebranded to the name Lenovo in 2003 and began making acquisitions to expand the company. Lenovo acquired IBM 's personal computer business in 2005, including the ThinkPad laptop and ThinkCentre desktop lines. Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's personal computer division accelerated access to foreign markets while improving Lenovo's branding and technology. Lenovo paid US$ 1.25 billion for IBM's computer business and assumed an additional US$ 500 million of IBM's debt. This acquisition made Lenovo
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3906-543: The LePhone. At the same time, LeGarden counted 2,774 individual developers and 542 developer companies as members. On January 27, 2011, Lenovo formed a joint venture to produce personal computers with Japanese electronics firm NEC . The companies said in a statement that they would establish a new company called Lenovo NEC Holdings, to be registered in the Netherlands. NEC received US$ 175 million in Lenovo stock. Lenovo
3999-552: The LenovoEMC brand, and designed products for small and medium-sized businesses that could not afford enterprise-class data storage. Lenovo has since retired all of the LenovoEMC products on their product page advising that the products are no longer available for purchase on lenovo.com. IBM sold its x86-based server lines, including System x and Blade Center , to Lenovo in 2014. Lenovo says it will gain access to more enterprise customers, improve its profit margins, and develop
4092-512: The Motorola brand, but Liu Jun, president of Lenovo's mobile device business, became the head of the company. In April 2014, Lenovo purchased a portfolio of patents from NEC related to mobile technology. These included over 3,800 patent families in countries around the world. The purchase included standards-essential patents for 3G and LTE cellular technologies and other patents related to smartphones and tablets. In May 2015, Lenovo revealed
4185-599: The No. 2 provider of smartphones in the domestic Chinese market in 2012. However, with approximately 100 smartphone brands sold in China, this only equated to a 10.4% market share. In May 2012, Lenovo announced an investment of US$ 793 million in the construction of a mobile phone manufacturing and R&D facility in Wuhan , Hubei . In 2013, Lenovo created a joint venture with EMC named Iomega . The venture took over Iomega's business and rebranded all of Iomega's products under
4278-548: The ThinkLight. A few ThinkPads (17" W700 and W701) have featured the ThinkLight with dual white LEDs. The HP EliteBook series notebooks contain a similar keyboard light called HP Night Light . Unlike the ThinkLight, it is activated by a physical button next to the Night Light, rather than a keyboard shortcut. Third-parties offered external LED-based illumination solutions for the HP 200LX series of DOS palmtop computers in
4371-613: The United States Department of Treasury Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was reportedly the last major hurdle for Lenovo, since the United States has the strictest policies. According to Timothy Prickett-Morgan from Enterprise Tech, the deal still awaits "approval of regulators in China, the European Commission , and Canada". After closing, Lenovo said that its goal
4464-459: The ability to build a new corporate culture. At the end of its first two years, Lenovo Group had met many of its original challenges, including integrating two disparate cultures in the newly formed company, maintaining the Think brand image for quality and innovation, and improving supply chain and manufacturing efficiencies. However, Lenovo had failed to meet a key objective of the merger: leveraging
4557-546: The acquisition would double its share of the German computer market, making it the third-largest vendor by sales (after Acer and Hewlett-Packard ). The deal, which closed in the third quarter of the same year, was claimed by The New York Times as "the first in which a Chinese company acquired a well-known German company." This acquisition will give Lenovo 14% of the German computer market. Gerd Brachmann, chairman of Medion, agreed to sell two-thirds of his 60 per cent stake in
4650-515: The acquisition, Lenovo announced that its subsequent acquisitions would be concentrated in software and services. In September 2012, Lenovo agreed to acquire the United States–based software company Stoneware, in its first software acquisition. The transaction was expected to close by the end of 2012; no financial details have been disclosed. Lenovo said that the company was acquired in order to gain access to new technology and that Stoneware
4743-827: 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 1988. 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
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#17327931404344836-681: The brand, with profit margins thought to be above 5%. Lenovo aggressively expanded the THINK brand away from traditional laptop computers in favor of tablets and hybrid devices such as the ThinkPad Tablet 2 , ThinkPad Yoga , ThinkPad 8 , ThinkPad Helix , and ThinkPad Twist ; the shift came as a response to the growing popularity of mobile devices, and the release of Windows 8 in October 2012. Lenovo achieved significant success with this high-value strategy and in 2013 controlled more than 40% of
4929-401: The case for laptops, though adding or replacing some parts, like the optical drive , hard disk , or adding an extra memory module is often quite simple. This means that a desktop computer configuration, usually a tower case , can be customized and upgraded to a greater extent than laptops. This customization has kept tower cases popular among gamers and enthusiasts . Another advantage of
5022-413: The cloud. As more services and applications are served over the internet from off-site servers, local computing needs decrease, this drives desktop computers to be smaller, cheaper, and need less powerful hardware. More applications and in some cases entire virtual desktops are moved off-site and the desktop computer runs only an operating system or a shell application while the actual content is served from
5115-679: The combined strength of the two companies to grow volume and market share. In order to achieve success, Lenovo embraced diversification at multiple levels- business model, culture, and talent. By 2015, Lenovo grew into the world's number 1 PC maker, number 3 smartphone manufacturer and number 3 in the production of tablet computers. In March 2017, Lenovo announced it was partnering with Fort Lauderdale, Florida–based software storage virtualization company DataCore to add DataCore's parallel I/O -processing software to Lenovo's storage devices. The servers were reportedly designed to outperform Storage Area Network (SAN) SAN arrays. In 2017, Lenovo formed
5208-424: The compact form factors, remain popular for corporate computing environments and kiosks. Some computer cases can be interchangeably positioned either horizontally (desktop) or upright (mini-tower). Influential games such as Doom and Quake during the 1990s had pushed gamers and enthusiasts to frequently upgrade to the latest CPUs and graphics cards ( 3dfx , ATI , and Nvidia ) for their desktops (usually
5301-541: 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
5394-490: The company hit $ 60 billion in annual revenues. On 8 October 2021, Lenovo withdrew its application to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange just days after it had been accepted by the exchange, citing the possibility of the validity of financial information in its prospectus lapsing as the reason. The price of the company's shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange dropped by over 17% following the news, which
5487-438: The company publicly announced its new English name, "Lenovo", with an advertising campaign including huge billboards and primetime television ads. Lenovo spent 18 million RMB 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 RMB on rebranding. Lenovo
5580-600: The company rebranded itself to Lenovo, it acquired IBM 's PC business including 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,
5673-479: 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. Lenovo (known at the time as Legend) became publicly traded after a 1994 Hong Kong IPO that raised nearly US$ 30 million at HK$ 1.33 per share. Prior to the IPO, many analysts were optimistic about Lenovo. On its first day of trading,
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#17327931404345766-415: The company's international resources, such as its global sales channels and operation teams. These three elements have shored up our sales revenue in the past several years." The employees of the division, including those who developed ThinkPad laptops and Think Centre desktops, became employees of Lenovo. Despite Lenovo acquiring the "Think" brand from IBM, IBM still plays a key indirect, background role in
5859-492: The company's stock price hit a high of HK$ 2.07 and closed at HK$ 2.00 suggesting an initial under-valuing of the company. Proceeds from the offering were used to finance sales offices in Europe, North America and Australia, to expand and improve production and research and development, and to increase working capital. By 1996, Lenovo was the market leader in China and began selling its own laptop. By 1998 it held 43 per cent of
5952-485: The company. He will be paid in cash for 80 per cent of the shares and will receive 20 per cent in Lenovo stock. That would give him about one per cent of Lenovo. In September 2012, Lenovo agreed to acquire the Brazil -based electronics company Digibras, which sells products under the brand-name CCE, for a base price of R$ 300 million (US$ 148 million) in a combination of stock and cash. An additional payment of R$ 400 million
6045-621: The conference and both gave speeches on corporate governance. Lenovo sold its smartphone and tablet division in 2008 for US$ 100 million in order to focus on personal computers and then paid US$ 200 million to buy it back in November 2009. As of 2009 , the mobile division ranked third in terms of unit share in China's mobile handset market. Lenovo invested CN¥ 100 million in a fund dedicated to providing seed funding for mobile application development for its LeGarden online app store . As of 2010, LeGarden had more than 1,000 programs available for
6138-429: The design and production of the Think line of products. Today, IBM is responsible for overseeing servicing and repair centers, and is considered an authorized distributor and refurbisher of the Think line of products produced by Lenovo. IBM also acquired an 18.9% share of Lenovo in 2005 as part of Lenovo's purchase of IBM's personal computing division. In the years following the deal, IBM sold their stake in Lenovo, with
6231-750: The desktop is that (apart from environmental concerns ) power consumption is not as critical as in laptop computers because the desktop is exclusively powered from the wall socket. Desktop computers also provide more space for cooling fans and vents to dissipate heat, allowing enthusiasts to overclock with less risk. The two large microprocessor manufacturers, Intel and AMD , have developed special CPUs for mobile computers (i.e. laptops) that consume less power and lower heat, but with lower performance levels. Laptop computers, conversely, offer portability that desktop systems (including small form factor and all-in-one desktops) cannot due to their compact size and clamshell design . The laptop's all-in-one design provides
6324-561: The display screen placed on top, thus saving space on the user's actual desk, although these cases had to be sturdy enough to support the weight of CRT displays that were widespread at the time. Over the course of the 1990s, desktop cases gradually became less common than the more-accessible tower cases that may be located on the floor under or beside a desk rather than on a desk. Not only do these tower cases have more room for expansion, they have also freed up desk space for monitors which were becoming larger every year. Desktop cases, particularly
6417-466: The domestic computer market share in China, selling approximately one million computers. Lenovo released its Tianxi ( 天禧 ) computer in 1998. Designed to make it easy for inexperienced Chinese consumers to use computers and access the internet, one of its most important features was a button that instantly connected users to the internet and opened the Web browser. It was co-branded with China Telecom and it
6510-527: The founders of Lenovo, indicated that the first meeting in preparation for starting the company was held on October 17 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
6603-515: The future around cloud technologies and their own POWER processor architecture. Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's businesses is arguably one of the greatest case studies on merging massive international enterprises. Though this acquisition in 2005 ultimately resulted in success, the integration of the businesses had a difficult and challenging beginning. Lenovo had employees from different cultures, different backgrounds, and different languages. These differences caused misunderstandings, hampering trust and
6696-467: The highest level of shipments the PC market has seen since 2012. In addition, gaming desktops have seen a global revenue increase of 54% annually. For gaming the global market of gaming desktops, laptops, and monitors is expected to grow to 61.1 million shipments by the end of 2023, up from 42.1 million, with desktops growing from 15.1 million shipments to 19 million. PC gaming as a whole accounts for 28% of
6789-422: The international norm of issuing quarterly reports. Lenovo created an audit committee and a compensation committee with non-management directors. The company started roadshows twice per year to meet institutional investors. Ma organized the first-ever investor relations conference held in mainland China. The conference was held in Beijing in 2002 and televised on China Central Television (CCTV). Liu and Ma co-hosted
6882-673: The late 1990s. The Dell Latitude ATG series laptops have also contained a pair of red LEDs which are controlled in a very similar way to the IBM ThinkLight and also serve to illuminate the keyboard. Some computer manufacturers have opted for backlit keyboards instead of illuminating the keyboard from above; but some ThinkPads included both the ThinkLight and a backlit keyboard (for example, T530, T430 and X230 models). Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited , trading as Lenovo ( / l ə ˈ n oʊ v oʊ / lə- NOH -voh , Chinese : 联想 ; pinyin : Liánxiǎng ),
6975-427: The late 2000s, and then the higher-performance Ultrabooks from 2011 onwards), which manufacturers believed had more potential to revive the PC market than desktops. In April 2017, StatCounter declared a "Milestone in technology history and end of an era" with the mobile Android operating system becoming more popular than Windows (the operating system that made desktops dominant over mainframe computers ). Windows
7068-453: The market for Windows computers priced above $ 900 in the United States. Desktop computer A desktop computer , often abbreviated as desktop , is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer ) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply , motherboard (a printed circuit board with
7161-412: The mobile side. The post-PC trend saw a decline in the sales of desktop and laptop PCs. The decline was attributed to increased power and applications of alternative computing devices, namely smartphones and tablet computers. Although most people exclusively use their smartphones and tablets for more basic tasks such as social media and casual gaming , these devices have in many instances replaced
7254-438: The motherboard. While desktops have long been the most common configuration for PCs, by the mid-2000s the growth shifted from desktops to laptops. Notably, while desktops were mainly produced in the United States, laptops had long been produced by contract manufacturers based in Asia, such as Foxconn . This shift led to the closure of the many desktop assembly plants in the United States by 2010. Another trend around this time
7347-502: The replacement of PCs in the 1990s, but this slowed in the 2000s due to the poor reception of Windows Vista over Windows XP. IDC analyst Jay Chou suggested that Windows 8 actually hurt sales of PCs in 2012, as businesses decided to stick with Windows 7 rather than upgrade. Some suggested that Microsoft had acknowledged "implicitly ringing the desktop PC death knell" as Windows 8 offered little upgrade in desktop PC functionality over Windows 7; instead, Windows 8's innovations were mostly on
7440-411: The smartphone market in 2012 and quickly became the largest vendor of smartphones in mainland China. Entry into the smartphone market was paired with a change of strategy from "the one-size-fits-all" to a diverse portfolio of devices. These changes were driven by the popularity of Apple's iPhone and Lenovo's desire to increase its market share in mainland China. Lenovo surpassed Apple Inc. to become
7533-548: The spare parts and extensions tend to be standardized, resulting in lower prices and greater availability. For example, the size and mounting of the motherboard are standardized into ATX , microATX , BTX or other form factors . Desktops have several standardized expansion slots , like conventional PCI or PCI Express , while laptops tend to have only one mini-PCI slot and one PC Card slot (or ExpressCard slot). Procedures for assembly and disassembly of desktops tend to be simple and standardized as well. This tends not to be
7626-609: The third-largest computer maker worldwide by volume. Lenovo's purchase of the Think line from IBM also led to the creation of the IBM/Lenovo partnership, which works together in the creation of Think-line of products sold by Lenovo. On the purchase of IBM's personal computer division, Chuanzhi said in 2012: "We benefited in three ways from the IBM acquisition. We got the ThinkPad brand, IBM's more advanced PC manufacturing technology and
7719-583: The total gaming market as of 2017. This is partially due to the increasing affordability of desktop PCs. Full-sized desktops are characterized by separate display and processing components. These components are connected to each other by cables or wireless connections . They often come in a tower form factor. These computers are easy to customize and upgrade per user requirements, e.g. by expansion card . Early extended-size (significantly larger than mainstream ATX case) tower computers sometimes were labeled as " deskside computers ", but currently this naming
7812-414: The type of computers most commonly used were minicomputers , which, despite the name, were rather large and were "mini" only compared to the so-called " big iron ". Early computers, and later the general purpose high throughput " mainframes ", took up the space of a whole room. Minicomputers , on the contrary, generally fit into one or a few refrigerator-sized racks, or, for the few smaller ones, built into
7905-632: The world's largest provider for the TOP500 supercomputers . In 2020, Lenovo became a preferred data center innovation provider for DreamWorks Animation starting with Trolls World Tour . On 12 January 2021, Lenovo filed an application to issue Chinese depositary receipts, representing newly issued ordinary shares, and to list them on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange . In April 2021, Lenovo
7998-439: Was bundled with one year of Internet service. The Tianxi was released in 1998. It was the result of two years of research and development. It had a pastel-colored, shell-shaped case and a seven-port USB hub under its screen. As of 2000, the Tianxi was the best-selling computer in Chinese history. It sold more than 1,000,000 units in 2000 alone. To fund its continued growth, Lenovo issued a secondary offering of 50 million shares on
8091-570: 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,
8184-408: Was its biggest intraday decline in over a decade. "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 : Liánxiǎng ) means "association" (as in "association of ideas"), "associative thinking", or "connected thinking". It also implies creativity. "Lianxiang"
8277-484: Was made dependent upon performance benchmarks. Prior to its acquisition of CCE, Lenovo already established a $ 30 million factory in Brazil, but Lenovo's management had felt that they needed a local partner to maximize regional growth. Lenovo cited their desire to take advantage of increased sales due to the 2014 World Cup that would be hosted by Brazil and the 2016 Summer Olympics and CCE's reputation for quality. Following
8370-543: Was reorganized into three divisions: The Intelligent Devices Group for PCs, Smartphones, Smart Collaboration products, Augmented and Virtual Reality solutions and Internet of Things devices, the Infrastructure Solutions Group (formally known as Data Center Group) for smart infrastructure solutions, and the Solutions and Services Group focused on services and industry-specific products. That year,
8463-449: Was the increasing proportion of inexpensive base-configuration desktops being sold, hurting PC manufacturers such as Dell whose build-to-order customization of desktops relied on upselling added features to buyers. Battery-powered portable computers had just a 2% worldwide market share in 1986. However, laptops have become increasingly popular, both for business and personal use. Around 109 million notebook PCs shipped worldwide in 2007,
8556-638: Was to become the world's largest maker of servers. Lenovo also announced plans to start integrating IBM's workforce. The acquisition added about 6,500 new employees to Lenovo. Lenovo said that it has no immediate intent to cut jobs. Lenovo said that positions in research and development and customer-facing roles such as marketing would be "100% protected", but expected "rationalization" of its supply chain and procurement. On 29 January 2014, Google announced it would sell Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for US$ 2.91 billion. As of February 2014, Google owned about 5.94% of Lenovo's stock. The deal included smartphone lines like
8649-499: Was to own a 51% stake in the joint venture, while NEC would have 49%. Lenovo has a five-year option to expand its stake in the joint venture. This joint venture was intended to boost Lenovo's worldwide sales by expanding its presence in Japan, a key market for personal computers. NEC spun off its personal computer business into the joint venture. As of 2010, NEC controlled about 20% of Japan's market for personal computers while Lenovo had
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