Slashdot Mirror
IBM Sells Point-Of-Sale Business To Toshiba
ErichTheRed writes "Yet another move by IBM out of end-user hardware, Toshiba will be buying IBM's retail point-of-sale systems business for $850M. Is it really a good idea for a company defined by good (and in this case, high-margin) hardware to sell it off in favor of nebulous consulting stuff? 'Like IBM's spin-offs of its PC, high-end printer, and disk drive manufacturing businesses to Lenovo, Ricoh, and Hitachi respectively in the past decade, IBM is not just selling off the RSS division but creating a holding company where it will have a stake initially but which it will eventually sell.' Is there really no money in hardware anymore? "
This is why they have a buyer.
But their consultants will look more honest when they go out shilling Toshibas POS systems, and they still have their slice of the pie. They wont be baking it, just slicing and serving.
I'm sure some Slashdotters, particularly those of overly-zealous Apple or Microsoft bend, thought all IBM divisions were POS divisions...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In my opinion there is a lot of money in hardware. Something else is wanting in most of Europe and perhaps North America. The will and enthusiasm to work physically with ones hands. And hardware is at the bottom line a physical thing.
We tend to talk about cheep labor, an expression which degrades labor in general when used so often. And so we end up with a lot of decision makers and wall-streeters who have no regard for physical things in general. Decisions will be made in favor of offices instead factories and money will flow to offices instead of factories.
As we can see in the example of China (owning a large part of the US) there must be money in hardware.
Germany, as an exception to the rule, seems to do quit well producing hardware but in general it is below our dignity to make our hands dirty producing something and this is the reason hardware returns little money in our culture.
Because of disruptive tablet and other mobile technologies in this market, the quality will decline regardless of the manufacturer. IBM has rightfully recognized this and is selling off before that decline can hurt the IBM brand. Look at HP for a comparison of inevitable dropping quality on commoditized (race to the bottom) hardware hurting the parent brand.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
isn't that why they're selling? The premium for IBM quality isn't justified or isn't sufficiently profitable anymore, and IBM wants the IBM brand to remain premium. So you sell off any non premium divisions to other people.
From the perspective of IBM no one should ever be fired for buying an IBM. That may mean you have an 80% markup on some things to make sure it's going to work and you can support it if it doesn't. But it damn well better work. If you can't justify that price or can't make it work sell the business and move on to something else.
There is no money in hardware. I found out the hard (stupid) way.
A hardware engineer with a PhD gets paid, entry, 100-110k on average.
A software engineer with MS get paid, entry, 100-100k on average.
A software engineer's work experience accrues without much 'expiration' date - this is more true as you move up higher in abstraction (so I'm not talking about firmware software driver guys, although they should be damn good at C/C++ which helps with getting into other things).
A software engineer can be an entrepreneur: see: Youtube founders out of Ebay, fresh-out-of-college grads. Software initial cost is almost 0.
A hardware engineer cannot be a real entrepreneur. He has to battle a mine patentfield (yeah, same for CS but usually you can get acquired quickly) and huge initial costs. Tools licensing is astronomical. A industrial grade SPICE license + Synthesis + Layout + P&R tools + etc will cost in the hundreds of K, if not hitting a million.
A hardware engineer faces huge elimination by being too close to the transistor level. A switch out of the BJT into MOS probably destroyed many engineers' accrued knowledge in one fell swoop, quickly. Similarly, the impending switch from MOS into double-gates will destroy many IC engineers' accrued knowledge just as quickly.
The same cannot be said for CS, as most of it can be abstracted quickly, and boils down to algorithmic practices which do not get outdated.
Laundry Iphone apps, Stupid dinky games, and apps to help you count how much you fart get millions in funding, while hardware startups flounder to get by (hence preventing others from even thinking of entering the HW game).
Yet, a HW guy (EE Major) has arguably the same skills, foundation, and fundamental knowledge as SW guys (CS majors). Its really just that EE guys don't like doing CS, but they could do it easily. I went to a top-tier uni with EECS as a combined major (and this is common at the top uni's). I can tell you the top EE guys aced their CS classes easily and beat out the top CS guys or were on par.
Why are we paid less? Yeah yeah low margins, blah blah. Well, f* this. I'm taking a stand and telling the ENTIRE next generation of EECS majors to do CS only. There is not much left in EE for the hard workers to do well in, other than work forever for CorpX earning less than CS majors, while doing the same workload with the same skillset. F** this.