The last bastion in IBM Corp’s reaguard action to keep the best of its technology for itself seems to have fallen with the news that the company has begun selling its 4M-bit memory chips on the OEM market – albeit only with a single contract thus far. Associated Press reports from Tokyo that an IBM Japan Ltd official said that IBM has begun supplying 4Ms to Hyundai Electronics Corp, Seoul, South Korea, adding that IBM had not increased production to meet the order but rather was attempting to eliminate excess stocks of 4Ms, which is another pointer to how badly the company’s systems have been doing. If IBM has changed its policy, it’s clearly bad news for other memory chip producers because it will mean more supply in a sluggish market, commented Steven Myers, an electronics analyst in Tokyo for Jardine Fleming Securities Ltd. The Nippon Keizai Shimbun reported that IBM’s sales to Hyundai would initially total several thousand chips a month and that IBM had also begun sales negotiations with several Japanese computer manufacturers, and planned to increase its sales volume as well as in the variety of chips it sold.
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