BIG TECH COMPANY
FEBRUARY 2, 2022
Tale Of The Big Blue : How IBM Changed The Personal Computer World
Tale of the Big Blue : How IBM changed the personal computer world and became the king of microcomputer for decades.
The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American company that manufactures and sells computer hardware and software. IBM was founded on June 16, 1911. It has been operating since 1888 and is headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM is the largest information technology company in the world and one that has continued from the 19th century.
On June 16, 1911, some companies which invented new technologies were merged by Charles Ranlett Flint and formed the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).
The New York-based company has 1,300 employees and offices and factories in Endicott and Binghamton, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; and Toronto, Ont.
In 1914, Flint recruited Thomas J. Watson, Sr., of the National Cash Register Company, to help him lead the company. In his first few years, Watson built on IBM’s success through its business and marketing strategies. Watson took over the company in 1924 and on February 14, 1924, the C-T-R was renamed the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
At the beginning of its emergence, IBM was a company that targeted corporations as its market share. IBM aka the Big Blue provides various technology services and even pioneered them.
However, this company was only widely known by the public in the early 1980s. At that time, IBM released the IBM PC, a computer that was featured in the November 1983 edition of Byte magazine. For the record, before the IBM PC was born, computers were only made to run one specific task.
With more than 330,000 employees worldwide and revenues of US$96 billion (figures from 2004), the company has technicians and consultants in more than 170 countries and development laboratories located around the world in every branch of computer science and information technology; some of them are pioneers in fields ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.
IBM Research has eight research laboratories located in the northern hemisphere, with half located outside the United States.
In 1953, IBM Endicott, located in New York, announced a product called the IBM 650. The IBM 650 was the first mass-produced computer hardware product. Between 1953 – 1962, 2000 systems were produced to enhance the performance of the IBM 650.
In 1964 IBM S/360 was the first third generation computer used for business and engineering applications. Microcomputers were developed using a microprocessor and a semiconductor in the form of a chip for computer memory.
During the 1960s, IBM OS/360 introduced the concept of an OS for all products, which became critical to the success of the System/360 machines. The operating systems on current IBM mainframes are derivatives of the early systems and applications written for OS/360 can still run on modern machines.
History records, in the 1970s to 1980s, IBM became the ruler of the computer world. They controlled almost 70 percent of the market share in the computer world at that time. By the end of 1983 about one million units of the IBM PC had been sold.
In 2002 the company strengthened its business capabilities by acquiring leading consulting services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
On May 1, 2005, IBM’s PC division was officially taken over by Lenovo, a Chinese technology company for $1.75 billion – including a purchase for the “ThinkPad” brand. IBM now has returned to their initial business core : Targeting business-to-business (b-to-b) services.
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