The irony is that even if the IBM Personal System/2 is nothing like as big a seller as was the original Personal Computer, it could still garner much more money for IBM than the company has made on its original brainchild: the completely open architecture of the original Personal turned into a disaster for IBM as the company saw its share of each sale dwindle to perhaps 20% with the lion’s share going to the reseller and the makers of add-on boards, displays, peripherals and software for the machine – while clonemakers took a larger part of the US market than IBM itself last year; there is still an enormous hard core of corporate users who will vote the IBM ticket no matter what, and those customers for Personal System/2 may well generate enough business for IBM that the machine turns out to be a much bigger moneyspinner for the company than were the Personal, XT and AT.
