With international business accounting for an unprecedented 58% of the total last year, the apprehension in Armonk at the suddenly soaraway dollar is palpable: there are still no signs of a pick-up in what has been a very dull US computer market for some three years now, and the need to translate European and Far Eastern business into dollars at today’s levels or higher threatens to undo the good work that promises to be achieved this year from the improvement in product mix and fundamentals at IBM; only consolation is that while foreign profits won’t look nearly so good when translated into dollars if the greenback keeps going up, margins should not be too badly hit because most of what IBM sells here is manufactured in Europe.
