The simple fact of the matter is that hardly anyone needs a mainframe. Most computing tasks these days can be accomplished better / cheaper with big racks of co

The simple fact of the matter is that hardly anyone needs a mainframe. Most computing tasks these days can be accomplished better / cheaper with big racks of commodity hardware that you can source from anywhere. In addition the huge price tag (starting at $500k I believe) serves to reinforce the marketing message to the corporations that purchase this stuff that is product is much more advanced, reliable and feature packed than the alternative, and that you want it if you can afford it. Why else would it be so much more expensive, right? IBM has likely done these calculations and figured out that their pricing is optimal for extracting the maximum profit from their customer base.