December 3, 2004

IBM will sell its PC business. A 2001 prediction comes true

In 2001 I wrote that IBM's PC business would not be around and suggested that it should merge with Dell. Well it doesn't look like the "Dell" part is going to happen but IBM's PC business is going to be sold according to a NY Times report.

(1987 IBM PC ad - right)

The NY Times writes 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.

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