I used to be a developer with IBM and I was quite surprised that people actually paid for some of their products. The majority of the software sales were done as a part of 'packages' and 'solutions'. There was very little innovation happening there. The only way any new 'solutions' were developed in the business were through acquisitions.
The decline and fall of IBM
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#12decline and fall of IBM? IBM transformed itself from a manufacturing company to one of the largest services company in the world. HP, Dell, everyone is getting out of the hardware business (low margin, etc.) and following IBM's lead (HP bought EDS and is trying to get rid of their hardware business. Dell bought Perot Systems 4 years ago and is in the process of going private so it can transform itself into a mini-IBM).
IBM's return on invested capital grew from 14.92 (2003) to 31.39 (2012).
HP from 9.98 (2006) ROIC to 14.97 (2012)
DELL from 43.33 (2003) to 11.32 (2012)
GOOG from 30.56 (2003) to 15.29 (2012) MSFT from 17.66 (2003) to 22.66 (2012)
AAPL from 1.55 (2003) to 42.84 (2012)
If you noticed, IBM's ROIC is higher than other tech companies except Apple.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#13website is down, the sweet irony... Now haven´t seen the opinion, I'm sure I have read the same already (over and over). IBM is not declining. To be magnanimous, I´d say it is only declining for narrow minded tech people who can see past their area of expertise. They are not investing, they are not innovating, they are cutting jobs in the US, bla bla bla. Well, they've been compounding at over 10% for the investor fo…
exactly.
"Why Warren Buffett Keeps Buying IBM"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2013/01/08/why-warren-...
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#14Cringely's server appears to be down. Here's a Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:trvMH5p...
Cloudflare is supposed to solve that problem but instead serve a page saying they can't. Not a positive endorsement of their service.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#15When I look at their net income (~16 billion) and stock two words that do not come to mind are decline and fall.
http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&c...
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#16website is down, the sweet irony... Now haven´t seen the opinion, I'm sure I have read the same already (over and over). IBM is not declining. To be magnanimous, I´d say it is only declining for narrow minded tech people who can see past their area of expertise. They are not investing, they are not innovating, they are cutting jobs in the US, bla bla bla. Well, they've been compounding at over 10% for the investor fo…
> Well, they've been compounding at over 10% for the investor for the last 10 years
Those sort of metrics are lagging indicators - they are about what was done in the past. There were plenty of similar companies with similar performance, right before they cratered. The Innovator's Dilemma covers this in detail. (Of course that is no guarantee IBM will crater.)
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#17This is actually old news. IBM has been in decline for a LONG time.
And Apple Is Doomed(tm)
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#18Cringely's server appears to be down. Here's a Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:trvMH5p...
Cloudflare is supposed to solve that problem but instead serve a page saying they can't. Not a positive endorsement of their service.
I've seen this on at least 6 occasions (for different sites) in the last few days. Is CloudFlare itself overloaded?
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#19decline and fall of IBM? IBM transformed itself from a manufacturing company to one of the largest services company in the world. HP, Dell, everyone is getting out of the hardware business (low margin, etc.) and following IBM's lead (HP bought EDS and is trying to get rid of their hardware business. Dell bought Perot Systems 4 years ago and is in the process of going private so it can transform itself into a mini-IBM…
And now IBM is headed back into the financial toilet again. Consulting and Services are going to keep IBM around, and the name will last another 100+ years, but their stock price isn't going anywhere but down.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#20"Decline and fall" because IBM missed one earnings target after 4 years of positive earnings surprises (or more, I didn't look any farther back than 2009). Seems a bit preemptive.
The author's chief complaint seems to be that the management is incompetent, but IBM has been known for excellent financial management for the past 2 decades, and the CEOs have not changed recently.