It is just beginning to sink in at IBM Corp that the company is now a leader in none of the fastest-growing sectors of the industry. Decades of effortless success and market domination mean that there are no models in its own back pages to chart strategies for coming from behind, and so it is having to look through all the strategies tried by its poor benighted would-be competitors in the 1970s and 1980s and decide which were the least unsuccessful and are most transferable to today’s market. IBM Europe late last week revealed that it has set up a special competitive market unit designed specifically to target the competition and try to chip away at their leadership. It says it will be offering technical assistance worth up to $150,000 to help users of non-IBM mid-range systems to convert their software to run on the the AS/400. We are so sure about the success of this campaign that we will allow customers to return systems, newly leased from IBM, at six months after installation without further obligation, said Erwin Staudt, one of the stars of IBM Deutschland GmbH’s sales operation and now the head of the new division at IBM Europe.
