Interesting, no news of this in the press release/latest news section of IBM's corporate website.
Use your personal computer to watch NBC's late night comedy programs.
This was been talked about for some time......
Guess the rumors were true..
It's there.
some bullet points:
- "The PC business at IBM posted a loss of $50 million on sales of $2.84 billion in the third quarter."
- Michael Dell, chairman of the PC maker that bears his name, said the combination probably will fail.
``When was the last time you saw a successful merger or acquisition in the computer industry?'' Dell told reporters during an Oracle Corp. conference in San Francisco. ``It hasn't happened. It hasn't happened in a long, long time.''
source for quotes http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aHNEaiLHd7P0&refer=home
comment: this gives China a greater stake in the world economy. they need the US market to make their investment profitable, so they will need to work within certain standards to gain cooperation. this can turn into a win-win situation as long as it's two way, but there is no escaping we need to be successful on a number of fronts - education, R&D investment, infrastructure, taxes, trade, policy, etc. - to maintain our global competitiveness.
I assume this will in turn give IBM entre into China with their global services which, given its higher profitability, would be a net plus for IBM (unless we read a few years down the line that they have to sell that too to the Chinese because they cannot compete. By then it may be unclear who "they" are anyway since it has become such a global business.)