Lenovo was the market leader in China with a global market share of 2.2%. However when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and almost overnight the largest global PC companies became very active within the Chinese market. Lenovo was under tremendous threats as it was unable to differentiate its products in both technology and design. In addition Lenovo did not have a globally recognized brand, did not have a management team that was capable of managing a global company as well as not having strong innovation capabilities.
Luckily IBM wanted to sell their PC business and under the circumstances Lenovo was in it was to their best interest to acquire the business. Throughout the acquisition in the year 2004 there were many interesting strategies used by Lenovo to become a globally recognized firm as well as retain important consumers, for example IBM allowing Lenovo to use their brand name on the Thinkpad/ IBM brand name for a period of time allowing time for the major customers time to adjust to the change.
In my opinion the transaction done by Lenovo was very successful, not only did they minimize most of integration integrations risks such as retaining big customer. Lenovo transformed itself from relatively small company that only sold low end PCs in china to the second largest PC vendor in the world and my take first in the upcoming quarter overtaking HP.
Sources: http://english.sohu.com/20041209/n223402729.shtml