4/15/2005

IBM

Has IBM dropped their competitive ball? When Macintosh first came on the personal computer scene, they had a monopoly over the PC market. They have maintained this monopoly (maybe only over their product) by not allowing their product to be duplicated by any competitors. As everyone knows, if you buy a Mac you buy a Mac.

My question is what happened to IBM? Their strategy seemed to be sound in the beginning, but has come back to bite them in the end. They took the opposite approach to the PC market. They let any and everyone make a product that would be interchangeable with the IBM. This was great for the consumer but left IBM with a problem. This being that they had no identity. You can buy an IBM based PC, but not necessarily an IBM. Is there anyway for IBM to regain its identity?

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Rex's post for grammatical errors.

IBM actually sold off the last of their PC business this past winter.

IBM's PC strategy was bizarre. They pushed for the creation of a standard, but then didn't come up with any products to be marketed across makers. Dumb, dumb, dumb.