“International Business Machines, whose first I.B.M. PC in 1981 moved personal computing out of the hobby shop and into the corporate and consumer mainstream, has put the business up for sale, people close to the negotiations said yesterday. While I.B.M. long ago ceded the lead in the personal computer market to Dell and Hewlett-Packard so it could focus instead on the more lucrative corporate server and computer services business, a sale would nonetheless bring the end of an era in an industry that it helped invent. The sale, likely to be in the $1 billion to $2 billion range, is expected to include the entire range of desktop, laptop and notebook computers made by I.B.M.,” Andrew Ross Sorkin and Steve Lohr report for The New York Times.
“The retreat from the business may be the ultimate acknowledgement that the personal computer has become a staple of everyday life, a commodity product, yielding very slim profits. The companies that make the most money from PC’s these days are Microsoft and Intel – whose software and chips are the standard for most of the personal computers sold, regardless of the maker,” Sorkin and Lohr report. “According to the people close to the negotiations, I.B.M. is in serious discussions with Lenovo, China’s largest maker of personal computers, and at least one other potential buyer for the unit. Lenovo was formerly known as Legend.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Imagine someone saying in 1984, “in two decades Apple will still be making Macs and IBM won’t even be in the PC business.” Who would have believed it?
Goodbye, IBM. Seriously.
Wow, all those pundits who went on and on and on ad nauseum predicting the death of Apple. Ironic isn’t it?
In 1983 there was a parody magazine done called ConfuserWorld. The main headline was “IBM Calls It Quit!” and went on to say they the PC business was no fun so they were getting out. Who’d a thunk it.
But seriously folks this can only benefit Apple as this and other simpler solutions are adopted by companies and others.
Micro$oft has the most to lose hence their focus on locking everyone into their DRM schemes and recurring revenue.
Apple is strong because they offer a solution that people recognize the value of.
I remember in 81, we were trying to get approved to sell IBM PC’s, and we were working on the business plans and we were looking for a kick. Something to make us, The Byte Shop NW, stand out from the crowd so I came up with training. Every CPU sold would come with a class, hardware and software training, before it went out the door. It worked and the rest is history but I never thought that IBM would “call it quits”, to paraphrase Confuserworld.
I have read a rumor that IBM’s PC division blocked a move by IBM’s server group to sell Xserve’s. I think that the IBM salesforce has creditablity with some companies that Apple never will. One possible change is another partnership between IBM and Apple that works to the benifit of both.
“Imagine someone saying in 1984, “in two decades Apple will still be making Macs and IBM won’t even be in the PC business.” Who would have believed it?”
Uh…EVERYBODY. In 1984, Apple was the PC leader and IBM was the newcomer. Apple was considered the powerhouse back then. Nice try again, MDN.
Now, if you had said that in 1997, no one would have believed it because by then Apple and IBM were also-rans to Microsoft.
RE mac-it:
IBM’s profits for the first quarter of 2004 were somewhere around 2 billion – I don’t think they’re going out of business anytime soon.