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Are PC makers poised for major hit?
November 29, 2004 -
Gartner cuts fourth-quarter PC forecast
November 15, 2004 -
IDC raises estimate for PC sales
September 27, 2004 -
Gateway makes bid for rival eMachines
January 30, 2004
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outsourcing business, including an insurance-claims processing company this week.
"I think IBM has stayed in the PC business in part because some of their large accounts have asked them to. But what's happened in the last couple of years is that Dell has become a well-regarded enterprise vendor," said Mark Stahlman, a financial analyst at Caris & Company. "(IBM) looks at its business as a portfolio, and PCs don't rank very highly."
Continued from...
1998
• Intel releases the 450MHz Pentium II.
• Apple ships the iMac.
1999
• The number of people worldwide on the Net passes 201 million.
2000
• Intel releases the 1.5GHz Pentium 4.
2001
• The number of PCs sold worldwide since 1981 hits 835 million.
• Apple's iPod turns on the music.
2002
• Apple unveils flat-panel iMac.
• HP closes book on Compaq merger.
2003
• AMD announces 64-bit Opteron and Athlon 64 processors.
• Dell starts its printer business.
• Intel launches Pentium M and Centrino wireless notebook brand.
• PC shipments rise again, hitting nearly 155 million units for the year, according to IDC.
2004
• Gateway completes eMachines buy.
• Intel kills plans for 4GHz Pentium.
Sources: Microsoft and CNET News.com staff research
Earlier this year, IBM consolidated its chip business with its server hardware group in an effort to improve the design of its processors. Both its chip business and its server business have performed well for the company, unlike IBM's PC unit, Stahlman noted.
Prudential Equity Group analyst Steve Fortuna said IBM is best served by focusing on higher-margin hardware products, such as servers and storage, rather than PCs.
"We believe that the PC business is absolutely not strategic to its long-term core strategy," Fortuna said in a research note on Friday. "To the extent that IBM does remain in hardware, they have focused their attention on areas in which they are able to differentiate themselves and add value."
Crown jewel: ThinkPad
Getting even a piece of IBM's business would give Lenovo--a company currently ranked ninth in worldwide unit shipments--a chance to grow its PC business globally and bring yet another round of consolidation to the PC industry, which has seen a number of mergers and acquisitions in the last two years.
It would also give Lenovo access to one of the PC industry's crown jewels: IBM's popular ThinkPad notebook lineup.
Lenovo would not comment on the IBM speculation, but it has indicated that it intends to expand both in China and overseas.
"Lenovo has been notably locked in China. It gives Lenovo access to the U.S. market and access to other world markets," Kay said. But "to get the IBM notebooks would be the prize."
IBM is a distant third in unit shipments, behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard. During the third quarter, IBM had 6 percent of the market, behind Dell's 18 percent and HP's 16 percent, according to IDC figures. IBM is No. 4 in portables, with 8.9 percent share.
Yet in the Asia-Pacific region, IBM leads in notebooks, with 16.5 percent share, a commanding lead over HP's 12.3 percent. Lenovo is ranked sixth, with 7.4 percent in that market.
IBM has consolidated much of the manufacturing of its two computer lines. Most of its ThinkPad models are produced in the company's factory in Shenzhen, China. Its Netvista desktop line is produced under contract by Sanmina-SCI. In January 2002, IBM inked a three-year, $5 billion manufacturing agreement with the company to build the PCs. At the same time, Sanmina-SCI purchased IBM's desktop manufacturing operations in the United States and Scotland, which included some 980 employees, for an undisclosed sum. Later, in January 2003, IBM signed a contract with Sanmina-SCI to produce some of its xSeries servers as well.
Rumors about a potential deal have been flying for some time within some circles in China and Taiwan. Those rumors have focused more on a deal between the companies to sell PCs inside China.
The geography also works out very well, IDC's Kay said, with all of IBM's ThinkPads already being manufactured in China. Lenovo already markets desktops, so it could halt manufacturing of either the IBM line or its own line, though it would likely keep both brand names.
CNET News.com's Dawn Kawamoto contributed to this report.
When you have a laptop and you are on a business trip the last thing most are going to be concerned about is whether or not they have the latest and greatest video card in their freaking laptop.
IBM's laptop have been so rock solid you really could throw one down a flight of stairs and still expect it to at least function. Try that with a Dell sometime. I've seen Dells that don't survive a drop from a table let along a major spill like that.
But is it any wonder now a days? In this Walmart society cheap is what matters. Screw quality. I know that's what my company said when we went from Compaq to Dell. Three years later I'm amazed at how ****** these Dell Latitudes are. We are having these POS fall apart left and right. Bad hard drive here, bad mobo there, bad video card over there, actually had a leaking LCD screen last summer that was a first.
Since then we moved over to the T41/42 series ThinkPad. I'll let you know where we are at in 4 years.
Each one was better than the prior one and the TrackPoint is infinitly better than a mouse -
better control and a reduced footprint.
I am writing this on a mode A22M which is dual bootable in SuSE (Novell) Linux 9.2 and Windows 2000. I hope that I will be able to purchase a new ThinkPad next year - one that has the IBM quality behind it - not one made where I live.
Rick Liu
Now I have to consider Apple and Fujitsu (I don't like to be in the 'control' of one brand in h/w AND s/w)...
to compete with them. Dell just suck ass bad. I read that the
computers they supply to Universities failed one after another
since a few weeks ago. The PCs these companies sells are not
reliable at all. To stay in such a business will either lose money
or get bad reputation.
longer? anyway, moving to powerbook is definitely a good
choice
http://www.triangletechjournal.com/news/article.html?item_id=771
I'm not sure who their sources were, but it seems correct in most of the details.
--RTP worker
What should have been on the timeline was the birth of AOL. Does anyone remember when AOL came on the scene? Othere than the introduction of Windows 3.1, I think AOL help contribute to the growth in sales of the PC by the common man. Anyone that had to deal with the DOS operating system knows that all to well. I didn't upgrade to Win3.1 until I had gone through DOS 4, 5, 6 & 6.2. I know I was on the internet by 1993 and AOL by I believe in 1994, then in the fall of 1995 or 1996 AOL was growing too fast and their equipment couldn't keep up with the growth and they were crashing daily and by then my phone company began offering internet service and I jumped away for good.
I also upgraded my original computer getting first larger Hard Drives 200mg then 400mg before entering the gig era with a 3.2 gig Hard Drive around 1996. RAM was very expensive and my original motherboard didn't have slots for RAM, so I had to attach what was called a Boca Board with 8 Mgs of RAM on it for athe odd total of 9 mgs of RAM, but I had for quite awhile more RAM than most of my friends. I got my first VGA video card and color monitor in 1993 and I believe I didn't get a mouse until 1994 when my 386 motherboard died and I upgraded to a 486 DX2 32. I began buying on the EGGHEAD auctions in 1998 barebone computers and building my own computers after a DELL Pentium II 450 crashed twice in 1998 and it wasn't until 2000 I bought on a uBid auction my first Pentium III class computer and this year my first Pentium 4 HP Wireless Laptop. What a wild ride it's been!!!
- Bad news for IBM
- by December 4, 2004 4:45 AM PST
- Almost as unprofitable for IBM as its PC sales have been its 'SME' business -- selling to companies with fewer than 500 staff. The withdrawal of IBM from the PC business will put an even bigger question mark over its SME sales operation.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(11 Comments)When Gerstner joined IBM in 1993, he quickly re-configured the company to cater for the needs of IBM's 100 biggest customers. These were the customers he visited and listened to when he was looking for a new vision, despite his statement that it was the last thing IBM needed.
Over subsequent years, IBM has continued to concentrate on large enterprises, while making a series of confusing statements and frankly half-baked moves in the small business market. While the bulk of the small business market wants Dell-like products (low-price, good-enough, standardised offerings), IBM continues to preach On Demand, a vision of a future so distant that few even of IBM's largest customers have bought into it.
IBM has given little impression of practicing an integrated approach to management. It has seemed an organisation riddled with internal conflict -- between the consolidators who believe in high-profit offerings for large enterprises and the predators who have been tasked with winning business in sometime high-growth segments, such as SMEs, dot-coms etc. Now the consolidators seem to have won.
Or rather the MBAs have won. CEO Palmisano says that over 50% of IBMers have worked for less than five years in the company. These guys have had little time to develop an awareness of the interrelationships between various parts of IBM's business -- e.g. that one way to penetrate the enterprise is often to sell the customer some PCs. The corporate strategy guys in IBM, led by a failed pSeries general manager, and advised by consultants and bankers who will make much more money if IBM sells off its business, seem to think that you can leave IT markets as soon as they look unprofitable, without regard to the knock-on impact on other IBM businesses or business partners. Long-term market commitment means nothing to them.
This is bad news for IBM, and bad news for IBM business partners, particularly at this time of year when so much of IBM's business comes in. HP must be shouting to the rooftops. Suddenly the PC market looks like it could become profitable, with one fewer major brand playing. Who is going to buy an IBM PC now that IBM has failed to flatly deny the rumour? The fact is that the last thing the PC market needs is another minor PC brand. IBM PCs were already made by a third party. If they no longer carry the IBM logo, what are they worth?
The PC division is worth far more inside IBM than outside.