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

To: i-node who wrote (446650)	1/11/2009 12:55:47 PM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

The reality is that IBM could have owned the PC business, start-to-finish, yet managed to let it get away from them. I don't believe that for a minute. If you had said that IBM could have had a stronger presence, or could have held a lead role in software, then I'd buy that. It was argued internally that to stay in the HW business IBM would have had to spin off the PC company. It was just too different in nature than IBM's other businesses. And there were serious failures...OS2 was an excellent OS that was mismanaged badly across the board. PS2 was just a bad idea...there were others, following of course the decision to outsource DOS and single threaded Windows. But they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to Boca to do it. I worked there for 18 years...not in the PC company however. I watched the site grow from a handful to 14K employees...and I watched it go to hell following Graham's decision to unitize Florida tax treatment of foreign revenue. It could have left the state either way...but he sure as hell kick started the exodus. Some of the other posts here have suggested otherwise, but they're clearly incorrect. I never meant to suggest such a thing. I am just not sure what would have emerged...so what I said is that IBM's introduction "standardized" the business to a large extent, which it tantamount to giving birth to it. I've told you that they lost me during the quality crisis of years gone by, so I certainly acknowledge the brand has been damaged, and I've never suggested otherwise. There you go...there are lots of people like you out there, for the reason you mention and for other reasons....market segmentation is a crucial part of the growth equation. With few exceptions, A GM is just an "uncool" car, and they have to change that to attract different segments of the customer base to the brand. In the past they seemed to do with the various names (Pontiac, Buick, Olds, etc..)...the value of these brands seems diluted and largely gone. If they got rid of UAW and its insane drain on corporate resources tomorrow, they'd be able to weather the current crisis. I don't argue that, but it's a tactical goal...when the crisis is over they are back to square one with a tired product, a disenfranchised customer base and meaner and hungrier competition. Al Al