After acquiring IBM’s PC division, Lenovo is accelerating its efforts to extend its brand and presence in international markets. PC industry analysts say that Lenovo could overtake Dell’s notebook business, while the Chinese company is wisely targeting emerging markets as major growth opportunities.

A few factors might factors give Lenovo an edge in these markets:

• A good understanding of consumer behavior in bureaucratic and credit deficient markets. While U.S. companies lobby foreign governments to change legislation and make their markets as “free” as the American, a Chinese company might actually find out that the Indian or Brazilian bureaucracy is even less than theirs.
• Lower overhead and lower pricing. Leading manufacturers tend to maintain their human capital in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, and their production in cheaper labor markets. The cost of overhead in such markets can easily represent more than 50% of the final price of the product. By shifting more human capital to its Beijing research center, Lenovo can significantly reduce its overhead.
• Greenfield markets don’t demand brand names. Lenovo relies on the ThinkPad brand to sell its products in the corporate world, but price tends to be main driver for sales in the BRIC consumer economies. This means that Lenovo will have to invest less in branding to try to sell to first-time computer buyers in developing countries. Advanced economies are replacement markets, where consumers are buying their second, third, or tenth computer. The good news for Lenovo is that 52% of consumers say that they are willing to change brands.

Lenovo wants to be the number 1 PC brand in 5 years. Dell and HP probably didn’t lose too much sleep about IBM and its 7% market share, but Lenovo — with a third of the Chinese markets for PCs and the advantages noted above — will cause headaches at those companies as the battle for the desktop shifts to developing markets around the globe.