Weird sense of humor they have in that shop. |
Posted on 03/03/2005 5:32:36 AM PST by Golden Eagle
LAS VEGAS -- Executives from IBM's (Profile, Products, Articles) PC division and Lenovo Group were out in force this week at IBM's annual PartnerWorld conference looking to reassure the company's channel partners that there will be no disruptions when the Chinese company's landmark $1.75 billion acquisition of Big Blue's PC group is completed, probably later in the second quarter.
Lenovo and the IBM PC group have close to 100 employees at PartnerWorld this year, five times the number that have attended in the past between the two, and assuaging channel concerns over the acquisition clearly is a priority for IBM. "How successful we will be together for the next 24 months ... will be determined in the next four months," said Steve Ward, senior vice president and general manager of IBM's Personal Systems Group.
IBM will be stepping up its PC marketing over the next year, and Ward announced plans to spend $200 million on PC advertising and demand generation over the next year. The company has also lined up 320 reference customers who are willing to endorse Lenovo and IBM's PC division in marketing materials, Ward said, in an address to conference attendees Wednesday.
Ward clearly was looking to respond to criticism from Dell (Profile, Products, Articles) of the planned merger. When reports of the deal first surfaced in December, Michael Dell gave it a low chance of succeeding. "When was the last time you saw a successful merger or acquisition in the computer industry? It hasn't happened, at least not in a long, long time," Dell's chairman said.
"The bad guys are using what's happened at Hewlett-Packard ... to say that their model is right, " Ward said Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...
Previous articles on the proposed deal:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1329688/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1349045/posts
Who's the "bad guys" here?
Ah, IBM selling America down the Yangtze.
IBM/Chinese ping
I think by "bad guys" he means "competitors" - at least that's how I read it.
Yeah, heaven forbid anyone get in the way of the Chinese government's attempts to takeover the PC market. /SARCASM
Either you believe in free enterprise or you don't. IBM has as much right to sell to the Chinese as MS or any other company.
Eagle uses any hook to throw spears at IBM. No matter what they do, he's outraged by it.
It's one thing to sell products to a country. It's another to sell them products that can be used for military purposes. It's entirely another to sell them entire businesses to their government, that can be used for military purposes, and to compete against other American businesses.
[["When was the last time you saw a successful merger or acquisition in the computer industry? It hasn't happened, at least not in a long, long time," Dell's chairman said.]]
Yea, I'm sure that the Chicoms have IBM's best interest at heart. The Chicoms have infiltrated just about every major high tech US company in the world and are notorious for stealing trade secrets. US companies, blinded by their obsession with diversity are digging their own graves and aren't even smart enough to realize it. The same goes for our universities. We have trained the Chicoms (and doing so taking a seat away from a native born American), only for them to go back to Communist China and then use the training that they received from us to work to unseat us as the global technology leader. The obsession with diversity is a mental disorder and should be classified as such.
So? It's just capitalism in action. Unless the government has declared PCs a restricted munition, I can't see what business it is of their's.
And there's so many items that *can* have a military purpose that I have a hard time seeing where the dividing line would be.
You got it. IBM is "selling" them a $10 Billion dollar per year business for less than $2 Billion, a practical 80% discount for the hope of favors down the road, which I bet they never see. I hope IBM's customers boycott the new Chinkpads, I mean Thinkpads.
When the Chinese government starts buying US companies at a discount, that's not "just capitalism in action", if you ask me. Now our US companies are going to have to compete against a government, not a business, to stay alive in the PC business. And it's damn hard to compete with communist dictacted slave labor.
OK, but is there a specific law that is being violated?
If so, then IBM is trying to break the law and can be stopped by legal means.
If not, then they are just performing legal commerce.
If the government wants to create a new law to prevent this, then they can try, but it's some slippery territory.
Personally, I think there's other things that have more military value to the Chinese, not the least of which is http://www.uspto.gov/patft/
Some amazing stuff in there, including the recipe for VX nerve gas (for which I will not provide a direct link. Make the Chinese search a little bit.)
It's a shame we have to create more laws to prevent US companies from selling out Americans, but based on events such as this I believe we do more. This deal is currently being held up by a group that includes homeland security, so maybe it will be blocked, but as you can see from this article, not if IBM can help it.
Only because they deserve it.
http://biz.yahoo.com/law/050302/ac2fb10a4fd26a6eeeaa97d682ca0c71_1.html
You gonna defend that? You do everything else.
Weird sense of humor they have in that shop. |
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They could get nailed on that one. I'm surprised the firing got past the lawyers.