IBM is generally a defensive company who reacts to others in the market.  Someone more familiar with the company can probably chime in, but I cannot remember the last time IBM was in the news for anything groundbreaking, but seem to stick the same market they've always had.

I grew up in the biggest IBM town in the world........and everyone worked for IBM. Hell, my old man was working for them for one year before he shipped out to Vietnam, and IBM held his job and paid him something like one week pay for every month of service. He came home, went back to IBM and did 29 years. Family picnics. Christmas gifts for the kids every year. Everyone in the area loved IBM.

And then the bottom fell out.

Big Blue

HP is another that has fallen from grace

 

I work for a company that made the mistake of purchasing a large quantity of IBM hardware.

They are, without a shadow of a doubt, in a tailspin.

Wappingers Falls?

Computers? Mainframes?

Cloud!

yes and once they get a contract their model is " You CANT AFFORD to leave us comrade, we hate you and you suck , invoice will be due this week,"

East Fishkill, yeah.

How's that forcing most global services to Dubuque going for them ...........

Both my grandfathers, my father and my aunt all worked for them.  I remember the IBM family days, those were the good ole days.

Anybody remember when IBM knowlingly assisted in the categorization of Jews for the Nazis?

IBM is nore more or less Lenovo.

My bet is Endicott.  Birthplace of IBM with 13,000 employees at one time.  Now there may be 1300 IBMers left supervising the contractors who operate the site using temporary workers.  An awful lot of BARs came out of that factory during WWII.

IBM sold a half-dozen branches to Lenovo, but continues to support them for the next 10 years.  They are separate entities.

I remember when IBM ruled the burbs north of NYC.

IBM created the "PC"

IBM is who put the first computer into most American homes.

But yeah, that was 25 years ago.

Sorry you don't keep up with technology, but IBM is the world leader in R&D, driving more patents than any other company for more than 20 years.

What about Xerox ?

IBM is not 'ground breaking' but they are a very solid company. They averaged around 6% profit on over 80 Billion USD in annual revenue from 2000-2010, but a lot of it came from overseas operations. As
such, the last couple of years have been a lot tougher as competition
ramps up in those markets. As far as I know, they are still a technology leader if judged by the number of U.S. Patents granted. They've one of the top 3 patent obtainers in the U.S.A. over the last 20 years or so. They usually come in first on an annual basis.
Out side of being groundbreaking, they're doing what needs to be done to stay afloat. For example:
Back in 2002-2006 hardware was becoming a commodity, anyone could put together a desktop or laptop from off the shelf parts ordered directly from the same suppliers who were providing them to IBM. IBM saw the writing on the wall and sold the business to Lenovo. They also looked at selling their server division to them as well.
Software on the other hand is fickle, but once a large company adopts a standard back-end (SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle) it becomes extremely difficult and expensive to switch to another system. IBM provides the service to maintain and operate the back-end software on whatever hardware the company uses (while trying to upsell IBM server products to that client)
It has been a good strategy. Most companies want to focus on what makes them money. Hiring administrators and IT folks to facilitate said business is usually not the focal point. Enter IBM, EMC, Deloitte Consulting and all the rest of the big firms. They provide the support that allows the primary business to run. If I was running a company, I'd much rather have a contract with a 99.5% SLA with one of these guys than try to figure out how to do it myself. Plus, if anything goes wrong, the service provider is on the hook (supposedly).
Buying back stock can be done for many reasons, the amount of SEC/federal law around ownership percentages (and a number of activist investors acting like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman who are wreaking havoc in publicly traded companies) can cause companies to buy back stock to meet XYZ requirement if they want to continue running things their way.
BTW IBM Research Facilities Watson, Almaden, and apparently Austin are still here in the USA. Back when I worked for them I only remember them having 3, now there look to be 12 or so. Servers are still built in Rochester, MN but a lot of that has been moved to Mexico and Poughkeepsie. (Mostly Mexico).

 
 

Yep.

IBM's fall from grace came with the help of Nazi Germany.

Want to streamline managing your "population".  Try IBM's new punch card computer!  It fits in just one building!!

eta: Beat x2.  Good!!

I remember when IBM made computers, what the hell do they even do now?

Why invest in American when Obama will just ship your tech and jobs overseas.

Yep, our saying was "I Been Mugged".  When their first PC came out we called it an "Itty Bitty Machine".

Out in East Fishkill too. And don't forget Poughkeepsie.

Believe their big thing now is enterprise resource and risk management. They do the groundwork and speculation for setting up a business for global markets IIRC. HP does it too.

And to think. They made Microsoft and Intel by picking their software and chips for their PCs.

My uncle has an IBM meat grinder that we use to make venison hamburger.  Having used some of IBMs server and client products I would say the IBM meat grinder was the pinnacle of IBM technology.

It's easy to lose sight of that when they're having such a hard time making money.  

Yep, used to be a great company.  According to my buddy who worked finance, IBM's computer business was peanuts compared to the money they made on real estate.  Most of the property has since been sold off.

Yep.

/lana

And what hasn't been sold off is an ecological disaster.

Superfund cleanup

That sounds very untrue.

According to Wiki, they are still a very successful company. Slight loss of revenue last year (5%).

It's Better Manually.  



 

So, looking forward, where is IBM going?



 

Bring back M1 Carbine!

LENOVO

Let's go back in the time machine it's 1966 and Ger42 is working for a milk coop in Newington CT. programming on and IBM 1130. Those were the days of bit and byte manipulation. IBM was king once you were a client to took and act of god to get rid of them. What an IBM'er said was it. You did not argue. I got the programmers position when the guy who had the position took a stance against IBM. He got canned the next day.

We had an investment challenge in high school, way back when.  We were supposed to put together a portfolio based on a hypothetical amount of money.  I chose IBM as one of the stocks, and it made tremendous gains.  I ended up winning the challenge, based partly on that.

They sell things to LENOVO.

Their network gear was the latest thing to go the way of Lennie-O.

IBM will go in the way of Pan Am.

I remember thinking IBM was basically the ONLY name in computers as a kid back during the 80s. It was all they had in my school. I suppose the first batch my school bought was actually among the first of their PCs. I found myself fascinated by the Apple computers another school in the region had when I went there on some kind of trip. It was the first time I'd ever seen any of those in person. This was probably around 1985-86, or thereabouts. I guess those models were state of the art at the time. But looking at how limited they were from today's standpoint, they almost seem laughable, especially considering how much a computer cost in the mid 1980s.

I used to work as a vendor at East Fiskill

Every major analyst worth listening to has had IBM as a BUY for the last three years. I'm sure their not going anywhere, and put out a decent dividend
as well. More ARFCOM "the sky is falling". My favorite was a few years ago when I bought 10k shares of B of A at $6, and everyone on the GD
told me I was crazy, and they were going to be out of business in six months. I sold it last January for $16.

That's exactly where they're headed.  There's no focus in their business.  Sales have been dropping for the past couple of years.  





Just like Pan Am, some other company will buy the planes and keep them flying...




 

they are dumping dead technology and focusing on R&D for next gen manufacturers

just because the product you are using is not branded IBM, does not mean you are not using their patents

here is everything you ever needed to know:

Good friend from college, his dad worked for them.