[DannyBee]

I'm not predicting doom, i'm predicting that given their revenue is dropping for the past 11 quarters, and they can't they will cut the number of people to match the size of the market in most places, since they don't believe they can grow those markets.

They don't need 400k people if their future is providing cloud and cloud services, and not tons and tons of services contracts in every walk of life etc

Given they've taken restructuring charges between 600 million and 1.5 billion the past few years (which is about 7000-20000 people a year), why do you think they are going to magically reverse course?

[jacquesm]

IBM has re-invented itself more times than you remember. They did it when mini computers came along, when the PC hit (an own goal if there ever was one), they did it when the Internet came of age (and when everybody else was still playing catch-up or even ignoring it) and I'm pretty sure they'll be able to survive the transition to the next phase of things (the cloud or whatever is fashionable). IBM is about as stable as they come, they do IT in whatever form it comes. When it was big iron they rolled their own hardware and software to go with it, now it is Linux, so they'll do Linux (on mainframes if you want it), if that changes, they'll change again.

I'd write off a lot of companies long before I'd write off IBM and while they're laying off in one set of divisions they're hiring in others.

So they're not 'magically' going to reverse course, they are gradually going to change course, like they've always done (and like every other supertanker does, move too fast and you'll break things for real, this is not a start-up).

Each and every one of those changes was heralded as 'the end of IBM'. They definitely messed up during the OS wars, I'll give you that but for the most part they rode the waves better than just about any other tech company that has been around this long. Rumors of IBMs imminent demise are most likely vastly exaggerated and any prediction of lay-offs should be henceforth accompanied by some evidence or I'll simply not buy them any more, especially when they entail 100K+ lots of employees.

How are Sperry, Control Data, Data General, Burroughs, SGI, Cray, DEC and a whole slew of others doing these days?

[iends]

In its pursuit of EPS, IBM has lost its rank and file within the USA. Morale is pretty low. When I left in 2014, "resource actions" were a weekly discussion topic. In Software Group. On a very profitable product.

Layoffs have been happening yearly from when I was an intern in 2007 until I quit IBM about a year ago. IBM stopped publishing its US employment counts for this very reason.

[agumonkey]

I can't agree more. IBM is so old it says something. But .. what's there for them in the future ? I don't know how much money they get from consultancy, or their mainframe/big-customers. Maybe the trends don't really matter in IBM's case. But when I see proliferation of tiny yet capable computing devices, self-driving cars, wearables etc etc I hope that IBM didn't leak all their hardware R&D talents out by aiming at services (subjective anecdatum: I wouldn't regret their software design / appserver for a second)

[mbesto]

Apple has failed itself more times than you remember. They did it with the Lisa, they did it when they tried to launch a PDA (Newton), and I'm pretty sure they'll crash and burn when they try to release an MP3 player or a smartphone. Apple is as volatile as they come. When it was business computing, they made the Apple III, and when it was USB, they made a mouse.

How is Apple doing these days?

[jacquesm]

Good example, thanks! Apple in fact did nearly crash and burn and all that kept them alive at some point was a hand-out from Microsoft.

And from a utility point of view: if all the apple hardware in the world would disappear tomorrow we'd get on just fine, but if all the IBM hardware (and software) would disappear tomorrow the world would grind to a very swift halt and it would be quite a while before we could say we're past the worst.

[IBM]

Microsoft's investment was too small to save Apple at that time, their revenue and losses were in the billions. The $150 million was symbolic, the more important thing was their commitment to the platform.

This article says that the investment was actually a result of a legal settlement.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-micr...