Yet it wouldn’t be surprising if Bill Lowe felt a mite aggrieved: after all it was IBM chairman and president John Akers who said in June 1986 that if certain market segments of the personal computer business became exclusively commodity-like we would probably see IBM departing – IBM is in the business of high margin sales (CI No 459), and it is difficult to argue convincingly that the 8088-8086-80286 end of the business is not a commodity market, where most people buy the best spec they can buy at their price level, almost regardless of who manufactures the thing; IBM flacks tried hard to play down the significance of Akers’ remarks in the days that followed, implying that they had been misinterpreted, but never denied that he made them.
