Perhaps they want to sell the x86 business and focus on the emerging ARM/alternative architecture business. I wonder what sort of non-compete the deal would include.
Being that IBM's POWER architecture is also a RISC architecture I would expect them to rally behind that, if anything. I've heard that POWER's performance had improved dramatically recently, so it would not surprise me if they were trying to push POWER.
edit: Yes, I did mean 'rally' - thank you.