Amdahl Corp really rubbed it in for IBM Corp, almost doubling turnover and making a small profit in the fourth quarter (see page seven) at a time when IBM was suffering an 11% decline in fourth quarter business: president and chief executive Joseph Zemke airily puts the rise in fourth-quarter revenues primarily reflects a normal cyclical pattern in which the largest number of mainframe computer purchases are typically made near year-end; sales of the company’s disk drives also increased substantially although prices have been under pressure for much of the year and continued to hit margins in the fourth quarter.
