Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Like the IBM PC, the PC-AT was hugely successful for home and business use. Intel
continued to second-source the device to ensure an adequate supply of chips to the computer
industry. Intel, AMD, IBM and Harris were now producing 80286 chips as OEM products,
whereas Siemens, Fujitsu, and Kruger either cloned it, or were also second sources. Between
these various manufacturers, the 80286 was offered in speeds ranging from 6 MHz to
25 MHz.
Intel had had considerable trouble providing enough 8086/80186 processors, and had
created technology-sharing agreements with companies such as AMD. This also allowed
companies to have a second source for processors, as many organizations (especially mili-
tary-based organizations) did not trust a single-source supply for a product. In 1984, it was
estimated that Intel could only supply between one-fifth and one-third of the current demand
for the 80186 device. For the coming 80386 design, Intel decided to break the industry prac-
tice of second sourcing and go on their own.
1.6
Post-PC development
IBM dominated the computer industry in the 1950s and 1960s, and it was only in the 1970s
that their quasimonopoly started to erode but, at the time, most of their competitors feared
their power. If a competitor released a new product, they would often sit back and wait for
IBM to trump them, with a better product that had the magical IBM badge. Few companies
had the sales turnover to match IBM in research and development. This was shown to great
effect with the development of the System/360 range, which had one of the largest ever re-
search and development budgets ($5 billion). After initial development setbacks, the Sys-
tem/360 range was a great success and paid off the initial investment, many times over. IBM
sold over 50 000 System/360 computers in a period of six years, and then replaced it with the
System/370 series, which was one of the first computers with memory made from integrated
circuits.
In 1981, IBM started the long slide from front-runner to also-ran, and within ten years,
their own child (the IBM PC) would match the power of their own mainframes. For example,
when the Pentium was released, in 1989, it had a processing power of 250 MIPS, while the
IBM System/370 mainframe had, at the time, a processing power of 400 MIPS. IBM even, in
the development of the IBM AT computer, tried to slug the power of the PC so that it would
not impinge on their lucrative mainframe market. As will be seen, IBM, after the overwhelm-
ing success of the IBM PC, made two major mistakes:
The PCjr. The PCjr quickly sank without trace, as it was not compatible with the IBM
PC. The time and money spent on the PCjr was completely wasted and gave other manu-
facturers an opportunity to clone, and improve on the original IBM PC.
Missing the portable market. IBM missed the IBM PC portable market, and when they
did realize its potential, their attempt was inferior to the market leader (Compaq Com-
puters). Later, though, they would produce an excellent portable, called the ThinkPad,
but, by that time, they had lost a large market share to companies such as Toshiba, Com-
paq and Dell.
After making these mistakes, other factors continued to affect their loss of market share.
These included:
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