Word: ibm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...generational shift unprecedented in the information age -- one that recalls a transition in the U.S. auto industry 70 years ago, when Alfred Sloan's upstart General Motors surpassed Ford Motor as the nation's No. 1 carmaker. The transition also reflects the decline of computer manufacturers such as IBM, Wang and Unisys, and the rise of companies like Microsoft, Intel and AT&T that create the chips and software to make the computers work. "Just like Dr. Frankenstein, IBM created these two monster competitors," says Richard Shaffer, publisher of the Computer Letter. "Now even IBM is in danger of being...
Although Intel and Microsoft still have close relationships with Big Blue, there is little love lost between IBM and its potent progeny. IBM had an ugly falling-out with former partner Microsoft over the future of personal-computer software. Microsoft developed the now famous disk operating system for the IBM-PC -- called DOS -- and later created the operating software for the next generation of IBM personal computers, the Personal System/2. When PS/2 and its operating system, OS/2, failed to catch on, a feud erupted over how the two companies would upgrade the system. Although they publicly patched things...
...IBM and Intel have also been parting company. After relying almost exclusively on the Santa Clara, California, company for the silicon chips that serve as computer brains, IBM has moved to reduce its dependence on Intel by turning to competing vendors. In Europe, IBM last year began selling a low- cost line of PCs called Ambra, which runs on chips made by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices. IBM also demonstrated a sample PC using a chip made by another Intel enemy, Cyrix. And last October IBM said it would begin selling the company's own chips to outsiders in direct...
...IBM clearly feels threatened. And the wounded giant still poses the biggest threat to any future dominance by Intel and Microsoft. Last year it teamed up with both companies' most bitter rivals -- Apple Computer and Motorola -- to develop advanced software and microprocessors for a new generation of desktop computers. In selecting Apple and Motorola, IBM bypassed its longtime partners. Just as Microsoft's standard operating system runs only on computers built around Intel's computer chips, Apple's software runs only on Motorola's chips. Although IBM has pledged that the new system will eventually run on a variety...
Despite their differences with IBM, Microsoft and Intel seem to have inherited some of Big Blue's most fearsome qualities. They have become so dominant in their markets, charge critics, that they are virtual monopolies. In a way eerily reminiscent of the Justice Department's famous 1969 trust- busting suit against IBM (dismissed after 13 years), both Intel and Microsoft are under investigation for possible antitrust violations...