Ah, I was waiting for Cringely's annual IBM-doom-and-gloom post.
The decline and fall of IBM
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#22When 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...
Their share of the tech industry (which they used to utterly dominate at a scale we hadn't seen since the days of Standard Oil) has been on an inexorable downward path for almost three decades now.
Yes, they're still large and influential, and even "successful" in a limited sense. But in context I don't think you can look at their recent history as one of ascendance.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#23[deleted]
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#24When 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...
Their share of the tech industry (which they used to utterly dominate at a scale we hadn't seen since the days of Standard Oil) has been on an inexorable downward path for almost three decades now. Yes, they're still large and influential, and even "successful" in a limited sense. But in context I don't think you can look at their recent history as one of ascendance.
A downward spiral for almost three decades while still being a multi-billion dollar company is a problem most hip startups would kill to have.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#25When 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...
Their share of the tech industry (which they used to utterly dominate at a scale we hadn't seen since the days of Standard Oil) has been on an inexorable downward path for almost three decades now. Yes, they're still large and influential, and even "successful" in a limited sense. But in context I don't think you can look at their recent history as one of ascendance.
IBM is the world's 24th most profitable company (2011). Only 23 companies in the entire world - not country but world - made more profit than IBM. Their revenue and profit grows year over year. Any definition of the term "downward path" that includes IBM is useless and provides no value.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/perfor...
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#26website 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…
And nothing of value was lost. It's a blog post with an intentionally hyperbolic headline to let you know he has a new book to sell.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#27When 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...
Their share of the tech industry (which they used to utterly dominate at a scale we hadn't seen since the days of Standard Oil) has been on an inexorable downward path for almost three decades now. Yes, they're still large and influential, and even "successful" in a limited sense. But in context I don't think you can look at their recent history as one of ascendance.
They used to dominate mainframe computing. They still do. Its just that the tech industry has become much much bigger than it used to be. PCs, internet, Mobile etc etc. You surely don't expect a single tech company to dominate the entire tech industry. It requires way too many competencies to make it work.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#28When 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...
Their share of the tech industry (which they used to utterly dominate at a scale we hadn't seen since the days of Standard Oil) has been on an inexorable downward path for almost three decades now. Yes, they're still large and influential, and even "successful" in a limited sense. But in context I don't think you can look at their recent history as one of ascendance.
IBM was smart and got out of the PC business years ago. Selling PCs is a bad business.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#29When 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...
Ever since IBM was taken over by PwC consulting, they've been eating their R&D seed for short term gains. So ya, they play the market well today, but I doubt they have much of a future. They also have played very little roles in recent innovations and inventions, even where they are supposedly strong (e.g. speech recognition and machine learning).
Many of the researchers I knew at Hawthorne left last year for places like Google and academia. I honestly know only a couple of IBMers now, whereas 10 years ago I knew many. This has something to do with them continually laying off US employees and replacing them with Indian employees.
But to be honest, outside of research, IBM had a very dysfunctional culture in the states since the early 90s. Most of the people they fired here were probably dead weight. Milking until there is nothing left is probably reasonable from the perspective of the shareholders.
Re: The decline and fall of IBM
#30IBM is doing quite well. They are not falling at all. Yes they are not what they used to be , but they dont need to look like the new hotness to survive. IBM provides very high quality services for medium and big businesses. I'm not sure i get your point , just look at the numbers , they are quite good.