Despite the fact that the company’s share price is heading south faster than the swallows can pack their bags, IBM continues to act as if nothing untoward was happening, and speaking in La Hulpe, Belgium yesterday, chairman John Akers downplayed the concerns that surfaced after the company announced the introduction of its high-end disk drive would be delayed. It’s not totally unusual that technology companies such as IBM have those types of problems, he said, citing similar delays that hit the 3380s, which nevertheless went on to become the leadership product throughout the 1980s in terms of disk storage devices. He also disingenuously described the propensity to lease rather than buy from IBM as well as currency fluctuations as somewhat beyond our control – if IBM Credit Corp weren’t offering bargain basement rates, customers would lease from third parties, and IBM could book every machine as a sale. Turning to Europe, Akers said he expects IBM’s growth here to outpace that of its industry competitors: IBM’s business in Europe is growing in European currencies at 15% or better, he said. But the company has no plans to expand the 109,000-employee European workforce. In preparation for the Single European market, IBM now has a manager for international marketing and sales in Paris, and would make it easier for customers with operations across Europe to deal only with the country operation of their headquarters.
