SoundView sees the likes of Wang Laboratories, Prime Computer Inc and Data General Corp suffering most from surging IBM AS/400 sales, but early signs are that the vast majority of the business is coming from IBM’s own System 36 and 38 bases, and the worry for the company must be that most of the orders from 38 users, and about a third of those from 36 users are already in the bag, so that the rapid take-up could lead to an equally early tail-off of sales; moreover the AS/400 threatens IBM’s own 9370 as much as it does any of the competition, and there is potential for very large third party business in converting 4331 and 4341 applications to run on the AS/400, so that overall, the machine could turn out to be a mixed blessing for IBM.
