IBM Selling its personal computer business ! ! !

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

When a company BUYS out another company, they are buying all their
contractual/warranty obligations.
However, the quality of tech support or customer service or both could
deteriorate or, less likely, improve.

--
http://www.standards.com/; See Howard Kaikow's web site.
"IS" <y@y.com> wrote in message
news:jDwsd.27277$fC4.21797@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> Did you read the headlines?
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6643423/
>
> What's gonna happen to us who have an IBM on the way as we speak?
> Will we still be able to download drivers and updates etc. after a year or
> two?
> What about tech support? Hardware?
>
> IS.
>
>

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Yep looks like IBM sold all the computer manufacturing biz to
CHINA per local newspaper report. So I imeagine HP/compaq/ and
Dell/Gateway will be the road to follow.
Kokomo Joe


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* Army MARS State Coordinator for Hawaii *
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Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

The issue is not where/who manufactures, the issue is where/who gives the
support.

--
http://www.standards.com/; See Howard Kaikow's web site.
"Dan Koren" <dankoren@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:41b38ec9$1@news.meer.net...
> "Joseph Fenn" <jfenn@lava.net> wrote in message
> newsine.BSI.4.58.0412051208010.4516@malasada.lava.net...
> >
> > Yep looks like IBM sold all the computer
> > manufacturing biz to CHINA per local
> > newspaper report. So I imeagine HP/
> > compaq/ and Dell/Gateway will be the
> > road to follow.
>
>
> Those have already sub-contracted their
> PC manufacturing to China and Taiwan a
> long time ago. As far as I know, only
> Fujitsu and Panasonic among the majors
> manufacture their PC's and notebooks
> *outside* China.
>
>
>
> dk
>
>

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"John Doue" <notwobe@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:WVVsd.48$Eb.16@read3.inet.fi...
> Howard Kaikow wrote:
>
> > The issue is not where/who manufactures, the issue is where/who gives
the
> > support.
> >
> No, it is only one aspect of the issue. The original quality of the
> product is paramount, good support to a bad product will not make it good.

Any company who cares about support will take efforts to have quality
products if only to reduce their support costs.
I would not expect to find good support from a company producing inferior
products.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

John Doue wrote:
> ...[snip]...
> The more serious question is, why has IBM lost interest in its computer
> activities? I would surmise that if they were very profitable, IBM would
> not be selling them. Would there be something wrong in the way the
> Western World handles its approach of economy and its quest for ever
> lower costs?

For IBM to meet its goal (some rate of stock price growth) with an
expensive labor force, IBM must sell high valued products - not
commodities. Thus IBM products must be differentiated in some way
(more/better function/application/support) from competitors products.
When IBM has a product where it sees that it cannot maintain that
differentiation in the future, then it is time to sell off that product
line - while the product line still has market value.

dick w

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

John Doue wrote:

> Dick Weaver wrote:
>
>> John Doue wrote:
>>
>>>...[snip]...
>>>The more serious question is, why has IBM lost interest in its computer
>>>activities? I would surmise that if they were very profitable, IBM would
>>>not be selling them. Would there be something wrong in the way the
>>>Western World handles its approach of economy and its quest for ever
>>>lower costs?
>>
>>
>> For IBM to meet its goal (some rate of stock price growth) with an
>> expensive labor force, IBM must sell high valued products - not
>> commodities. Thus IBM products must be differentiated in some way
>> (more/better function/application/support) from competitors products.
>> When IBM has a product where it sees that it cannot maintain that
>> differentiation in the future, then it is time to sell off that product
>> line - while the product line still has market value.
>>
>> dick w
> Valid point. But this is only the narrow end of the problem, the
> question is, why ? How sophisticated has a product to be for western
> economies to keep interested in producing it?

Not "how sophisticated". The problem is that if a third-world country using
labor that considers $5 a day to be a huge wage (and can live well on that
in the local economy) can produce the product to an adequate quality
standard then how do you compete using labor that gets paid $20 an hour and
benefits?

"Western economies" are "interested" in producing just about everything.
Consumers are not willing to pay two or three times as much for something
just because it was made in a "Western economy" (by the way, what does
"Western" have to do with anything? There are "western" countries that are
as dirt-poor as any place in Asia). If you can't sell your product then
your company goes bankrupt and ceases to exist and can no longer produce
_anything_. So you don't try to compete in areas where you can't make a
product that has some benefit over the third-world equivalent.

> Of course, the
> conventional answer is to say that the progressive switch to higher tech
> products compensates for the loss of others. I think we are kidding
> ourselves ... But this is obviously OT.

This is a transient economic state. Right now there are countries in the
world where it is possible to live reasonably well for a daily wage that is
less than the hourly wage of a dishwasher in the US. As those countries
develop their economies the expectations of their people increase and
eventually they demand wages at the same level as those paid in the US and
Europe and Japan. But it takes time.

Remember when Japan used to undercut US prices on just about everything
because they could provide high quality with cheap labor? That day is long
past and Japanese companies are also outsourcing to other economies with
lower labor costs. Taiwan and Korea still have relatively low labor costs
but they aren't low like Rwanda is low--eventually they're going to come up
to First World levels and then they'll be outsourcing and bellyaching about
how _they_ can't compete with the third world. And eventually if the whole
thing doesn't end in an ecodisaster or nuclear war or whatever first the
whole world will have high labor costs and the problem will have solved
itself.

But we probably won't live to see that.

And in the meantime, you make what you can sell at a profit. If you can't
sell it at a profit then you go bankrupt and so there's no point in trying.


>

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> wrote in message
news:Inltd.2278$X54.1063@fe05.lga...
> Many Taiwan-based companies are already manufacturing in Mainland China
> because the labor there is even cheaper than in Taiwan. There isn't the
> language problem either (except for the simplified written form on the
> mainland).

"Manufacturing" a PC is a trivial operation that can be carried out by
automatons. Buy the book "Building the Perfect PC" and you'll see that the
task is not rocket science. Building a notebook should not be much, if any,
harder.

The critical factors are:

1. The design of the particular computer, e.g., ease of access to
components, ease of adding/replacing components, air flow and quality of
components used.
2. Availability, and quality, of hardware support.
3. Availability, and quality, of software support.
4. Warranty and servicing of warranty.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:cp4sr902u2m@news3.newsguy.com...
> The Taiwanese manufacturers are not buying motherboards and video boards
and
> whatnot and screwing them together. They're designing and manufacturing
> the boards, and in some cases the components that go on those boards.
It's
> a bit more complex than you make out.

I covered that in my item 1 about "design".

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"Howard Kaikow" <kaikow@standards.com> wrote in message
news:cp4qvf$5dk$1@pyrite.mv.net...
> "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> wrote in message
> news:Inltd.2278$X54.1063@fe05.lga...
> > Many Taiwan-based companies are already manufacturing in Mainland China
> > because the labor there is even cheaper than in Taiwan. There isn't the
> > language problem either (except for the simplified written form on the
> > mainland).
>
> "Manufacturing" a PC is a trivial operation that can be carried out by
> automatons. Buy the book "Building the Perfect PC" and you'll see that
the
> task is not rocket science. Building a notebook should not be much, if
any,
> harder.
>
> The critical factors are:
>
> 1. The design of the particular computer, e.g., ease of access to
> components, ease of adding/replacing components, air flow and quality of
> components used.
> 2. Availability, and quality, of hardware support.
> 3. Availability, and quality, of software support.
> 4. Warranty and servicing of warranty.
>
>


You appear to suffer from an illness endemic to
the computer industry which tends to make people
believe that every work done by others must be
trivially simple.

Wake up.



dk