Strategic Planning of IBM IBM is the world(s dominant manufact

The company(s mission is to provide high-quality computers, computer peripherals and software to its customers. During the company(s long history, it has done this through heavy investment in research and development, and through dominating the computer and related products marketplace (Smith, 1994, p. 1). However, the company, which dominated the personal computer market in the early 1980s, lost considerable market share during that decade to the point where it had only an 11 percent market share in 1992 (Smith, 1994, p. 9). Today, the company faces a market of increased competition and a lack of market domination. At the same time, the company(s stock price has fallen precipitously during the early 1990s, from the 140s in 1991 to below 50 in 1993 (Coyle, 1994, p. 1210). Once

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ing. Until the 1980s, the company was successful in selling hardware, software, databases, operating systems and peripherals as part of one deal. At the same time that the personal computer market began exploding, however, the computer market in general moved away from the one-stop technique (Smith, 1994, p. 8). Instead of customers seeking a single source for their computer problems, they began seeking one manufacturer for hardware, another (or several) for software, and possibly a third for an operating system and a fourth for databases. Thus a company might purchase a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer with a Unix operating system and an Oracle database running third-party application software. This approach was one that IBM was slow to adapt to, and one that gave its competitors in all of these areas the chance to gain significant market share. It is because the market changed that IBM is forced to take on the functional strategy of cost cutting. After its current restructuring program, IBM plans on cutting $3 billion in fiscal 1994; this is in addition to $3 billion in cuts in 1993. Much of this cost cutting comes through reducing the workforce to a level of 215,000, which represents a loss of some 45,000 in 1993 plus anoth
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Approximate Word count = 2664
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)