Lenovo NEC Holdings BV, the joint venture of Chinese PC giant Lenovo Group Ltd and Japanese PC maker NEC, said it plans to have a 30 percent share of Japan's personal-computer market within three years.

It has been one year since Lenovo announced a $175 million joint venture with NEC.

The combined market share of Lenovo and NEC a year ago was about 23.6 percent, according to the US-based IT research company IDC.

The share is now 25.4 percent, ranking first in the Japanese market for the second quarter this year.

Japan, as the third-largest PC market globally, will become an important part of Lenovo's global strategy, said Roderick Lappin, Lenovo NEC executive chairman.

The gap of global PC market share between the US-based computer manufacturers Hewlett-Packard Corp and Lenovo has narrowed to 0.7 percent in the second quarter.

The Chinese company reached 15 percent market share globally during the second quarter, it announced on Aug 16.

Japan will become Lenovo's key market, Lappin said.

In order to cater to different customer groups, the Chinese company decided not to merge the two brand names, but to sell them separately.

The move differs from Lenovo's strategy after it bought the US PC division of IBM Corp in 2005.