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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (446512)	1/10/2009 2:34:32 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575181

"In the PC business you guys haven't mentioned the importance of Intel's 8086 chip." There were better chips at the time.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (446512)	1/11/2009 9:43:55 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575181

I've been there and you're correct...In the PC business you guys haven't mentioned the importance of Intel's 8086 chip. IBM adopted it in its first PC and has been using the follow on versions since then. It's also my understanding that IBM has never made a profit from PCs...is this correct? There was great ambivalence at IBM back then...remember that it was generating billions in profits from its mainframe and SW businesses...there were concerns about the pros and cons of an open PC architecture and there were concerns about the ability to make money in the consumer space. The PC business made poor profits and at times no profits. Any consumer space business eventually becomes a penny pinching process and IBM was accustomed to 20% profits at the time. Right or wrong (i think wrong) IBM has over the years chosen to avoid or divest consumer oriented businesses. Look at the history of its printing division as a perfect example. Little known fact is that IBM generates 2B in revenue and 400M in profits from its printer business, year after year, after divesting to Lexmark. Al