Interesting People mailing list archives

IBM sells its PC business to CHINA


From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:22:42 -0500



Begin forwarded message:

From: DV Henkel-Wallace <gumby () henkel-wallace org>
Date: December 8, 2004 1:46:36 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] IBM sells its PC business to CHINA

Dave,

You know, this reminds me of another bubble, about 20 years ago. The dollar was sliding, so people with lots of dollars (mostly Japanese companies) bought US assets as a hedge (remember Pebble Beach, Rockefeller Center, Columbia Pictures, Universal, etc). Most of those were subsequently sold at a loss -- sometimes to the original sellers!

IBM may have gotten the better deal of the two. They got to hang onto all the high-margin (so-called "value add") parts of that division; Lenovo basically got the low-margin manufacturing.

What this really shows is that the PC hardware as innovation platform is probably dead. I think most of us realised this already.

Regards,
-d

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