Looking at the other major cloud providers, it seems that necessity to support their own retail needs is the biggest reason companies like Amazon, and Alibaba are so far ahead of a company like IBM.
Instead of IBM continuing to acquire tech companies left and right to try to catch up, what IBM really needs to do is buy a retail company. And, there are plenty of brick and mortar retail companies that are probably a bargain now.
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IBM has consistently failed in the consumer market. When PCs were just starting the whole world waited for IBM to step in so they could follow, and IBM blew it. You can't name a single IBM consumer product that succeeded.
@3ytg+18f9nG4o,
I don't think we would even be discussing Apple if they were only B2B no?
Apple without the iPhone, hmm, yeah you get the picture.
Me betting $5 that all this uncertainty will lead to AK exiting with a package and JIm W taking the helm.
Who wiling to bet?
Oh, total bollocks! Isn't Apple a B2C company? They are raking in >$50B per year as income. Forget about this b-to-whatever cr*p, make something customers are willing to buy!
The assertion that "IBM needs to be in B2C" seems to come up regularly on this board. The remarkable thing is that none of the people advocating it seem to demonstrate much knowledge of how retail or B2C work; nor any actual specific proposals (who to sell to / what to sell / how to sell it).
@2cmw+18f9nG4o - At Amazon, retail businesses with large margins are what Bezos calls "our opportunity"
@3ybg+18f9nG4o - Some retail business is at zero or even negative GP. The retailer makes money only on the free cash flow and "turns"; or sometimes on promotional kick-ins from the manufacturer. (When you see an exceptional special offer at the supermarket and the product is on an end-cap, it's a fair bet that the retailer is pricing it at zero margin or close, and their profit is in the money the manufacturer paid for the promotion.)
And some retail business is initially negative because it depends on the "lifetime value" of the customer, e.g. if you've ever heard the expression "give away the razor, charge for the razor blades". Compare also the printer / ink pricing model.
Retail can’t be even lower than some of the GPs (less than 15%) on fixed price deals in GBS these days
there are retail businesses with higher margins than IBM's business.
You are absolutely correct. IBM only looks for businesses with high margins and with no competitors. This is the reason why they have gotten rid of some many things along the years. That makes you wonder how they will do in the Container/Kubernetes space... It will be a disaster because IBM doesn't know how to compete,
Retail is a low margin business. Online retail is the lowest of low margin. If anybody thinks that IBM could successfully operate a B2C business, let alone retail, well, I want some of what they're smoking.
BTW it's a myth about Amazon and Alibaba being successful in cloud because of them also being retailers. I could get into the real analysis but it is far too long and complex for a post here.
There is no brain at IBM.
Only having a B2B business model has kept IBM in the c-apper.
Can’t fix stupid