WhereIsAtlas · Computing

IBM

The 1911 company that built the mainframe, invented the PC era, and refused to die

Transformed — The century-old computing icon sold its PC business to Lenovo and pivoted to hybrid cloud and AI.

IBM began in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, a merger of three firms making punched-card tabulators, and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924 by Thomas J. Watson Sr., who turned it into a sales machine for tabulating machines. For most of the 20th century IBM was synonymous with 'computing' — its System/360, launched in 1964, created a single compatible family of computers that swept industry, banking and government.

In 1981 IBM launched the IBM PC, the machine that defined what a personal computer was. In an uncharacteristic move it outsourced the operating system to a tiny Seattle company called Microsoft and the chip to Intel — a decision that created an industry standard but handed the profits of the PC era to others. As PCs became a commodity, IBM's dominance eroded; it sold its PC division to Lenovo in 2005 and its x86 server business to Lenovo too in 2014.

The company survived by moving up the stack. It built a massive services and consulting arm, invested in enterprise software, and in 2019 acquired Red Hat for about $34 billion — its largest deal ever — to anchor a hybrid-cloud play. It also lavished attention on Watson, its question-answering AI that beat champions on Jeopardy! in 2011, though commercialising it proved harder than the hype. Today IBM is a smaller, more focused hybrid-cloud and AI company that has outlasted nearly every rival it ever had.

Quick facts

Founded
1911 (renamed IBM, 1924)
Defining hardware
System/360 (1964), IBM PC (1981)
Sold PC business
Lenovo, 2005
Bought Red Hat
2019 (≈ $34B)
AI flagship
Watson (Jeopardy! 2011)

Sources

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