Bama Brian wrote in news:h9p9rj$6j1$1
@news.eternal-september.org:

As to IBM, well, that company damn near shot itself to death twenty
years back. Fortunately for it, its management learned early that they
were NOT competitive in manufacturing - which is why they got out of
the
mainframe biz early, and why they quit the PC market even while it was
still hot.

IBM got into trouble for many reasons. One was marketing.....sales reps
felt they had to work just as hard to sell 10 PCs as they did to sell a
370 or a pair of AS400s. IBM confused the public with its PS2 marketing
as the customer base associated it with a non standard proprietaty
architecture (which it was) rather than the industry standard available
in clones. OS2 (a much superior op system to DOS/Windows) was associated
by marketing with PS2 so that folks didn't realize OS2 would also run on
all clones.

I am not sure what you mean by getting out of the mainframe biz early
means. IBM WAS the mainframe industry until the 80s when they didn't
properly respond to Sun and some others. They left UNIVAC and CDC in the
dust.



--
Sleep well tonight,

RD (The Sandman)

"Fear is the foundation of most governments."

President John Adams