1. IBM's market share in the Top 100 Computer Companies marketplace was:

By sales:
1979 -- 25 percent,
1994 -- 20 percent,
1997 -- 17 percent,
1999 -- 15 percent
(1999 data -- the IV's preliminary estimations)

So, during the 15 years between 1979 and 1994 IBM's sales market share dropped a full 20 percent. For the next 5 years -- another 20 percent.
Any comments regarding this?

2. IBM's market capitalization has decreased to the level of about 8 percent of the Top 100 Computer Companies.
What does this mean?

3. Our strong opinion is the following: IBM can only expect positive changes in this worrisome tendency if/when the company's Web Influence rank becomes not less than that of its sales rank -- resulting in an iFactor of no less than 1. Currently that level is much lower than the  company's sales ranking; an incomprehensible tendency that we referred to as IBM's Web ignorance.

IBM e-commerce related report and Scott Gannon's well-spoken additional technical details have clarified IBM's internal Web policy to us and we feel your direction is well chosen.

If so, what is the basic roadblock that still prevents IBM from beginning to create the comparable level of effort on the entire Web (outside of the borders of IBM's internal production & distribution process)?

4.  A few years after Apple's introduction of personal computers, IBM moved in the PC area and became the dominant force there for the majority of a decade. In the early 1980s, IT industry people said that the impetus to the IBM PC project happened after Radio Shack relocated one of their stores to the IBM's headquarters area in Armonk, began to sell TRS-80s there and IBM people began to buy them as quickly as they would hot-dogs.

What exactly should happen in Armonk now to stimulate the first real large-scale movement for IBM into the entire Web area before it'll become irreversibly too late: an earthquake, a tornado, a relocation of one of Internet Valley's offices to Armonk?

5.One of IBM's killer commercial slogans during the 1970s was: "DEC fixes iron. IBM solves the problems"

What is the company that would be able to launch the same slogan regarding iBusiness at the end of the 1990s:
"… fixes iron. …. solves Web problems"

Will it again be IBM?

See also some of  Internet Valley's suggestions regarding IBM's potential marketplace in entire Web.

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