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IBM is dying, http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/08/whats-happening-at-ibm/ http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/08/whats-happening-at-ibm/ I hope their Apple purchase

IBM is dying, http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/08/whats-happening-at-ibm/ http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/08/whats-happening-at-ibm/ I hope their Apple purchase isn't an indicator of the same.

rdtsc 10y ago
Yeah that guy wrote a book about how IBM is dying a few years ago and ever since then keeps writing blog posts about it. Whether it is dying or not I would not listen to him.
- banku_brougham 10y ago
  A behemoth like IBM takes a while to die. I've read a bit about IBM. They are toast, the market for mainframes, server racks and expensive enterprise service packages is disappearing.
  - notaharvardmba 10y ago
    Except watson, patents, their financing arm, 99 year contracts with governments globally...
    - josh2600 10y ago
      ... Have you ever tried to use Watson for anything? The aspect of dying is a forward looking thought which presumes that growth has ceased within the organization and the best they can do is to maintain their current state. I think that's a fairly accurate depiction of IBM's business although the recent performance notes I've seen of the Power chipset with PG_SQL are pretty encouraging.
    - ReedJessen 10y ago
      I estimate about 60% of IBMs patents are invalid after the recent Alice v. CLS Bank decision. Just no one has call them out on it yet.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bbody 10y ago
    Read history, whenever an industry gets too distasteful for IBM they sell it. E.g. Desktops/Laptops and more recently servers to Lenovo. The products might be supported by a lot of services, a mainframe might not be cheap but nor are mainframe consultants. A lot of large corporates still use mainframes and some probably have no plans to get rid of them. Edit: Grammar mistake
    - jalopy 10y ago
      IBM is a master at reinvention. They regularly discard unprofitable businesses and expand into profitable ones. In 2014, they disposed of businesses representing $7b in revenue but -$500m in profit. Managing to the future by getting rid of the dead weight is the only way you can survive to be a 100+ year old company in the technology space.
fredgrott 10y ago
Yeah but of the 75mill iphone sold per quarter, how much are to old customers and new? Be careful! at 95% world-wide saturation for smartphones the answer is very different now than it was in 2009...
- brisance 10y ago
  Apple is not even close to the #1 selling smartphone in China or India, both with the largest populations on Earth. So I don't follow why this is a bearish case for Apple. At the macro level, yes there are economic headwinds but compared to mature markets like North America and EU, there are still some ways to go for these two markets. Which is why Tim Cook is spending time there.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    I'm fairly bullish on Apple, but both "smartphones are a saturated market" and "there's tons of market room in China and India" are overly simplistic. China's median income is maybe $8,000/year or so. India's median income is $1,600/year. They're big countries, but they aren't that big. Each is about 4x the size of the United States, or about 2x the size of all of Europe. And obviously with those kind of incomes, the addressable market at anything vaguely close to US/European prices is a small fraction of the total population. And China at least is pretty protectionist. At the same time, yes, everyone in the US/Europe already has a smartphone, noted. And yes, perhaps the upgrade market is getting a bit softer -- but still, it's not THAT soft. There are plenty of people in the US or Europe who will happily buy an iPhone every year or two for the next several iPhone generations, and a larger contingent who will buy every three or four years, but that's far from nothing. And Apple can at any time it feels like it wants to cut some margins and fight with Android for market share, in whatever judicious way it wants to. Apple in 2015 was a unique company at the pinnacle of a unique moment in technology. It's may never be the company it was in 2015 again. But it turns out that there's a hell of a lot of value in a company that's not quite what Apple was in 2015.

IBM is dying, http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/08/whats-happening-at-ibm/ http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/08/whats-happening-at-ibm/ I hope their Apple purchase isn't an indicator of the same.

rdtsc 10y ago

Yeah that guy wrote a book about how IBM is dying a few years ago and ever since then keeps writing blog posts about it. Whether it is dying or not I would not listen to him.

banku_brougham 10y ago
A behemoth like IBM takes a while to die. I've read a bit about IBM. They are toast, the market for mainframes, server racks and expensive enterprise service packages is disappearing.
- notaharvardmba 10y ago
  Except watson, patents, their financing arm, 99 year contracts with governments globally...
  - josh2600 10y ago
    ... Have you ever tried to use Watson for anything? The aspect of dying is a forward looking thought which presumes that growth has ceased within the organization and the best they can do is to maintain their current state. I think that's a fairly accurate depiction of IBM's business although the recent performance notes I've seen of the Power chipset with PG_SQL are pretty encouraging.
  - ReedJessen 10y ago
    I estimate about 60% of IBMs patents are invalid after the recent Alice v. CLS Bank decision. Just no one has call them out on it yet.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bbody 10y ago
  Read history, whenever an industry gets too distasteful for IBM they sell it. E.g. Desktops/Laptops and more recently servers to Lenovo. The products might be supported by a lot of services, a mainframe might not be cheap but nor are mainframe consultants. A lot of large corporates still use mainframes and some probably have no plans to get rid of them. Edit: Grammar mistake
  - jalopy 10y ago
    IBM is a master at reinvention. They regularly discard unprofitable businesses and expand into profitable ones. In 2014, they disposed of businesses representing $7b in revenue but -$500m in profit. Managing to the future by getting rid of the dead weight is the only way you can survive to be a 100+ year old company in the technology space.

fredgrott 10y ago

Yeah but of the 75mill iphone sold per quarter, how much are to old customers and new? Be careful! at 95% world-wide saturation for smartphones the answer is very different now than it was in 2009...

brisance 10y ago
Apple is not even close to the #1 selling smartphone in China or India, both with the largest populations on Earth. So I don't follow why this is a bearish case for Apple. At the macro level, yes there are economic headwinds but compared to mature markets like North America and EU, there are still some ways to go for these two markets. Which is why Tim Cook is spending time there.
- aetherson 10y ago
  I'm fairly bullish on Apple, but both "smartphones are a saturated market" and "there's tons of market room in China and India" are overly simplistic. China's median income is maybe $8,000/year or so. India's median income is $1,600/year. They're big countries, but they aren't that big. Each is about 4x the size of the United States, or about 2x the size of all of Europe. And obviously with those kind of incomes, the addressable market at anything vaguely close to US/European prices is a small fraction of the total population. And China at least is pretty protectionist. At the same time, yes, everyone in the US/Europe already has a smartphone, noted. And yes, perhaps the upgrade market is getting a bit softer -- but still, it's not THAT soft. There are plenty of people in the US or Europe who will happily buy an iPhone every year or two for the next several iPhone generations, and a larger contingent who will buy every three or four years, but that's far from nothing. And Apple can at any time it feels like it wants to cut some margins and fight with Android for market share, in whatever judicious way it wants to. Apple in 2015 was a unique company at the pinnacle of a unique moment in technology. It's may never be the company it was in 2015 again. But it turns out that there's a hell of a lot of value in a company that's not quite what Apple was in 2015.