A Chinese company whose name few outside Asia had heard of has nevertheless managed to become the world's fourth-largest largest PC manufacturer, made possible by its purchase of IBM's PC division, writes Karlin Lillington.

IN ITS THREE years of existence, Lenovo Ireland has come a long way since managing director Fiona O'Brien lay in a hospital bed with pneumonia, signing company documents brought in by bemused couriers.

O'Brien, who had been a 10-year veteran of IBM, became director of Lenovo Ireland when the Chinese electronics giant became the surprise purchaser of IBM's personal computer division in 2005.

All but one of the IBM personal computing team followed O'Brien to Lenovo, which now has a sales team, a high-level support team for Europe and a website design and management team based in Ireland.

"We were taking a huge leap of faith at the time," she says. "That period was a rollercoaster and I was learning as I went along, to be honest."

Up until then, O'Brien and the others had been part of a huge company with a major Irish presence and it never fell to O'Brien to deal with big issues such as accounts and finances, company formation and so forth.

Then suddenly, even though she was ill, she had to get documentation done and legal work signed so that Lenovo Ireland could come into being.

Three years on, O'Brien looks back at the the period as "a fantastic experience".

"We've kept all our people, we've kept our customers [enterprise and small to medium business customers originally with IBM's PC division] and we've started to win new customers."

Lenovo - a company few outside Asia had ever heard of - startled the western technology world when the former state-supported Chinese firm suddenly became the world's then-third largest PC manufacturer overnight by buying the IBM division.

Many analysts wondered how the company would fare as the first major Chinese firm to move into the western business world. A crucial question was whether Big Blue customers with the world's best known technology company would stay with the unknown Lenovo.

As it turns out, most did. The company has aggressively developed its business with some highly praised machines - particularly its laptop lines - and expanded into work stations and soon, servers.

One of the largest Chinese consumer electronics firms, Lenovo has also begun a slow advance into the consumer market, too, with initial forays into the US, France and South Africa. O'Brien says Britain and Ireland are an obvious future market.

The company is currently outpacing the overall PC market, with eight consecutive quarters of growth. In the most recent quarter, it saw 21 per cent growth in shipment sales versus 15 per cent in the overall market and 30 per cent growth in Emea - Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The Irish market is slightly different from the rest of Europe, says O'Brien. "We're still lagging behind in mobile [laptop] numbers," she says. "There's been an overall market decline in desktop sales worldwide, but desktop sales are higher in Ireland."

Why? She isn't really sure, but guesses it may be due to the higher price premium that up until recently existed for laptops, especially laptops with embedded Sims (enabling automatic broadband connections on 3G mobile networks).

Prices have tumbled, however, and she says Lenovo will shortly start offering a complete package of laptop with embedded Ericsson Sim, and a partnership with a mobile provider similar to one recently introduced in Britain. She expects this to help drive Irish laptop purchases.

One hot area of growth for the company is in the ultraportable space, where its 12in screen machine has had excellent reviews. With a 13in also coming onto the market, "you're going to see a greater demand for ultra-portables".

A weak point remains the firm's low global brand awareness, despite being the current number four manufacturer in size.

While Lenovo opted to drop its right to use the IBM logo much faster than expected, O'Brien says that in hindsight, it would probably have done better to launch immediately on the Lenovo brand name.

Lenovo is, however, one of the major sponsors of the Beijing Olympic Games, a fact it was trumpeting from 2006.

"That Olympic linkage was extremely important and really did help us launch the brand," she says.

Lenovo is providing 30,000 pieces of equipment and 600 technicians for the games.

This week, Lenovo started a major TV ad blitz around the Olympics in the US to increase the brand's familiarity with consumers and, once the games start, the logo will be everywhere on the screen, too, notes O'Brien.

"But now we need to do some local things to build brand awareness here. That's something we haven't done yet."

In Ireland, O'Brien says one major achievement for the company has been to compete successfully for public sector contracts, especially in the education arena.

Lenovo Ireland is also beginning to build a presence among SMBs - small and medium businesses - a key market for Ireland. However, it is always competing with Ireland's very high-profile employer, Dell, which makes it harder to gain visibility.

While the company stresses it is a global technology company, Lenovo's Chinese heritage has been controversial at times - a major sale of 16,000 PCs to the US department of defence was scotched, for example, after a security outcry in 2006.

O'Brien says though that the multinational employees have learned much from the tight and efficient operations of the Chinese parent and the focus on long-term results, not short-term strategies that confuse employees.

"There's no overriding culture at Lenovo, but I'm quite proud of the Chinese element," O'Brien says. "It's a whole different way of thinking. Long-term is long-term. The benefit is, it makes everyone in the company know what we're trying to achieve."