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- <text id=92TT2896>
- <title>
- Dec. 28, 1992: A Torrent of Pink From Big Blue
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Dec. 28, 1992 What Does Science Tell Us About God?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 16
- BUSINESS
- A Torrent of Pink From Big Blue
- </hdr><body>
- <p>IBM announces more layoffs and cutbacks. Will these be the last?
- </p>
- <p> When the mighty fall, it's never a pretty sight. But few could
- imagine how grim until International Business Machines
- announced its most traumatic cutbacks to date. In its fifth
- major restructuring in the past seven years, the world's largest
- computer company plans to shed more unprofitable and ill-fitting
- businesses in 1993 and slash its work force 8%, or 25,000
- employees. The latest round of reductions will include the first
- involuntary layoffs in the company's 78-year history and will
- result in a $6 billion pretax charge for the fourth quarter.
- </p>
- <p> In recent years, IBM has lost share in market after
- market, including personal computers. But the massive cuts are
- mainly a signal that IBM is finally acknowledging a fundamental
- change in its core mainframe-computer business. For years, Big
- Blue has tried to ignore the market's shift away from the
- closet-size number crunchers to less expensive but powerful
- desktop computers and workstations. Now declining sales of
- mainframes have forced IBM to face up to the transition.
- </p>
- <p> Traumatic as the cutbacks are to the giant firm's
- employees, they underwhelmed Wall Street analysts. Many think
- IBM has yet to bite the final bullet, and must pare its costs
- and payrolls further.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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