What profit it a company if it sell to the whole world but fails to make a profit? The IBM Personal Computer Co, celebrating its first birthday, reckons that it is growing at a rate two-and-a-half times faster than the personal computer industry as a whole – delivering a chunk of new volumes equivalent to a Dell-and-a-half – but the problem is that this time last year, the company was right in the gutter selling very little, and was still preparing to launch the mass-market ValuePoints and new PS/1s that have boosted volume enormously over the past year but few outside IBM believe that the business is at all profitable for the company; it says that over the last three quarters, its worldwide unit shipments grew at a rate of 40% to 45% – but given the transformation in the product line and pricing, so it should.
