Just three months after launching its Power Series of PowerPC-driven personal computers, the axe is poised to fall on IBM Corp’s 700- to 800-strong Power Personal Systems Division, today’s Unigram.X reports. While insiders say the original plan was to fold it into the Personal Computer Co some time next year, lower than expected sales appear to have accelerated the requirement to find the business unit a final resting place. Having separate sales teams pushing iAPX-86 and PowerPC desktops was always seen as unnecessary in the new cost-conscious IBM operation, but because the Power Personal Division engineering was also responsible for the almost identical PowerPC RS/6000s while the Personal Computer Co has no Unix credentials, there’s a notion that the desktop hardware folk may end up in Irving Wladawsky-Berger’s RS/6000 division while sales, marketing and notebook teams could be turned over to the Personal Computer Co. Another possibility that’s still to be discounted is that the operation may live as a free-standing unit reporting to server chief Nick Donofrio.
