When Yang Yuanqing, chairman and chief executive of Lenovo, took the stage at a product launch ceremony in Beijing last month, he did so to a standing ovation. Employees at the Chinese PC maker are in high spirits because business is good.

In the six months to September, Lenovo has overtaken both Taiwanese rival Acer and Dell of the US to become the world’s second-largest PC vendor after Hewlett-Packard by unit shipments with a 13.7 per cent global market share, according to IDC.

That is a drastic change from early 2009, when the company fired its American chief executive after reporting a $97m net loss for the 2008 December quarter, a 5 per cent drop in shipments and a slide in global market share to just 7.3 per cent that saw it fall well behind Acer into fourth place.