Re: [Thinkpad] I.B.M. Said to Put Its PC Business on the Market

As an IBM Business Partner,

It's been plain for a few years that IBM sees itself as a solutions
provider/consultancy business - not the creator of solutions - though
some products still carry an IBM brand.

IBM are pulling out of the software and hardware market - ie making
these things themselves for their customers. They like many companies
don't know were the next bright ideas will come from and no guarantee it
will be theirs. So dropping in-house production makes sense to IBM.

What will happen to the brand? As a name it will have some life - even
if the quality and development may change - let's hope for the better
and not think it's all down hill!

David (Being in an optomistic mood)

Michael Z Daryabeygi wrote:
> So let's hear it.
> Who has a prediction on the future of our beloved think pads?
> Does anyone know about Lenova?
> Will the integrity of the brand be maintained? Surely it won't
> disappear altogether?
> It is unclear to me if IBM will still be designing PC's? I guess this
> states that they were already cut back to purely design and this is the
> final cut.
> Anyone have more info?
>
> Matt wrote:
>
>> Just read this article in the Friday's New York Times.
>>
>> They're selling the whole pc hardware division:
>>
>> (Snipped)
>>
>> "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."
>>
>> "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."
>>
>> "in the most recent quarter, I.B.M. ranked a distant third in
>> worldwide PC
>> sales, with 5.6 percent of the market, according to Gartner, the market
>> research firm. Dell was the leader with 16.8 percent of the world market,
>> and Hewlett-Packard, which has absorbed Compaq Computer, had 15 percent."
>>
>> "To trim costs, I.B.M. has steadily retreated from the manufacture of its
>> PC's. In January 2002, it sold its desktop PC manufacturing operations in
>> the Untied States and Europe to Sanmina-SCI, based in San Jose, Calif.
>> I.B.M. now confines its role in PC's to design and product development
>> out
>> of its offices in Raleigh, N.C., with all the I.B.M.-brand desktop or
>> notebook computers made by contract manufacturers around the world."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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