Out of curiosity - When did Lenovo start building thinkpads?

[aphex]

I seem to recall it being mentioned that Lenovo had been building Thinkpads long before it actually acquired the PC division....

Does anyone have any sources for this info?

[w0qj]

In May'05 IBM announced that Lenovo would be selling Thinkpads.

It was just after the T43 was announced, but most of the T43's had "IBM" on it, until very recently:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=38743

[tomh009]

While much of the manufacturing was already being done in China, I don't believe that Lenovo itself was actually manufacturing ThinkPads or desktops for IBM prior to the acquisition of the PC Division.

Rather, starting from 2002, IBM had subcontracted increasing parts of its PC manufacturing to Sanmina-SCI, which did much of that work in its factories in China. Lenovo, on the other hand, also already had a manufacturing relationship with Sanmina-SCI before the PCD acquisition, also dating back to 2002.

I believe that the latest manufacturing agreement between Lenovo and Sanmina-SCI was signed sometime in 2005, and expires this year. I have not seen any indication Lenovo intending to move the manufacturing to its own facilities, but given that Sanmina-SCI does over a billion dollars of business with Lenovo annually, that would not be an easy move.