[00:00.00]Liu Chuanzhi And Lenovo

[00:05.62]The small concrete building hardly looks like a place where legends are made,

[00:10.43]but neither do the famous garages of Silicon Valley.

[00:14.37]China’s equivalent sits in the elite precincts

[00:18.21]of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing.

[00:22.91]Here is where, in the early 1980s,

[00:26.41]Liu Chuanzhi and about a dozen colleagues at CAS spent their days tinkering

[00:32.65]with magnetic storage technology for computers.

[00:36.03]Theirs was not strictly theoretical research，

[00:39.52]but to find commercial applications.

[00:42.16]At that time, Liu Chuanzhi said,

[00:45.10]“We were poor, and I just wanted to make an effort to improve my life.”

[00:50.15]It is safe to say Liu did.

[00:52.64]In fact his story is, well, legendary.

[00:56.45]A Shanghai native, Liu set up a shop with about $25,000,

[01:01.59]initially to distribute foreign-made computers and then,

[01:05.85]in 1990, to make PCs.

[01:08.72]The company that sprang from his research,

[01:11.22]Legend Computer, is far and away the leading maker of PCs in China.

[01:16.69]Even as he was distributing Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba products on the mainland,

[01:22.38]Liu had intention of working for them forever.

[01:26.09]His vision was to take on the foreigners that then dominated the Chinese market

[01:31.45]by building the capacity to make low-cost PCs,

[01:35.18]then selling them through the retail network Legend had already built.

[01:39.66]To execute that strategy Liu employed lots of younger and more market-oriented talents.

[01:46.98]One of them was Yang Yuanqing,

[01:49.73]who has made Legend expand into PDAs and cell phones except PCs.

[01:55.83]During the past two decades the world has watched famous national champs

[02:01.96]from the Republic of Korea get defeated

[02:04.93]when they tried to move into the American PC market.

[02:08.20]Liu Chuanzhi knows this history and is convinced he can learn from it.

[02:13.67]On May 1, 2005 Lenovo announced that

[02:18.38]it had made acquired IBM’s personal computing division to constitute a new Group

[02:24.28]under the Lenovo name with more than 19,000 employees worldwide.

[02:29.75]The new Lenovo is a leader in the global PC market,

[02:33.46]with approximately $13 billion in annual revenue,

[02:37.61]and products serving enterprises and consumers the world over.

[02:42.21]In 2004, Lenovo became the worldwide sponsor

[02:46.39]with the International Olympic Committee,

[02:48.89]and it will fund in support of the 2008 summer games in Beijing.

[02:55.29]These major sports marketing initiative

[02:58.69]will help introduce the Lenovo brand around the globe.

[03:02.73]So far Liu Chuanzhi still sticks to his initial intention and he said:

[03:08.65]“We bases Lenovo’s success on our customers’ achieving their goals:

[03:14.15]productivity in business and enhancement of personal life.”