IBM sells PC business

December 7, 2004 7:49 PM

The end of an era confirmed. IBM sells its PC business to China's Lenovo. Is a future Apple partnership in the works?
posted by xammerboy (16 comments total)

So, is it all services now?
posted by orange clock at 7:55 PM on December 7, 2004

Apple partnership in the works?

Rumor-of-the-moment.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:57 PM on December 7, 2004

regardless china is going to be THE world's super power in 20 years...
posted by clubmedia at 7:58 PM on December 7, 2004

So, is it all services now?

No, they still do the server hardware and zSeries mainframes.
posted by smackfu at 8:04 PM on December 7, 2004

Well, most laptops in the world are already made in Taiwan, and IBM's desktop offerings generally tend to suck.

So, not much of a loss.
posted by clevershark at 8:07 PM on December 7, 2004

Follow-up to this thread.
posted by Arch Stanton at 8:13 PM on December 7, 2004

http://www.metafilter.com/images/italic.gif
[click to make your text selection italicized (or type control-shift-t)]
posted by orange clock at 8:21 PM on December 7, 2004

wtf?
posted by orange clock at 8:22 PM on December 7, 2004

Hahahaha.

Anyway, IBM and Apple together sounds fine to me. Where was my G4 laptop assembled? Hmm, let me take a look. Designed in California, Made in Taiwan.

Anyway, IBM's smart enough to know that inhaling Apple would kill it. I wish I'd held onto those Apple shares even more now.
posted by fenriq at 8:36 PM on December 7, 2004

"q. what do you get when you combine Apple and IBM?

a. IBM."

Stolen from /.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:12 PM on December 7, 2004

this is gonna mean a lot of new jersey jobs lost
posted by clubmedia at 10:12 PM on December 7, 2004

I really doubt IBM is going to buy Apple. They really dont have any use for the culture, apple doesnt make much money, and IBM really doesnt care about the consumer market. They've always lost money whenever they attemped consumer stuff. Witness what happened to lotus after they bought them. Anyone ever buy an Aptiva? Anyway, IBM will be glad to provide apple with technology, but they dont trust themselves to do consumer again. After this divesture, IBM should be like 60% services, 30% tech (chip manufacturing and patents) and 10% software.
posted by JZig at 10:54 PM on December 7, 2004

There's still a significant hardware component in there, JZig. Just not consumer hardware.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:16 AM on December 8, 2004

Does this mean we're all screwed for a decent Windows laptop?

BTW, zSeries is HUGE in industry and government, so IBM will stay invested in enterprise hardware for a while.
posted by sid at 8:27 AM on December 8, 2004

the boxes are still going to be labled "IBM"?

And obvoiusly IBM isn't going to do anything with apple, if they wanted to stay in the desktop space, they wouldn't have sold it off.

In fact, they may not even be able to do desktops anymore.
posted by delmoi at 10:53 AM on December 8, 2004

According to CNET, part of the deal is that IBM and its subsidiaries will not sell or manufacture personal computers for the next five years.
posted by Prince Nez at 9:43 PM on December 8, 2004