Big Blue down on all fronts in its third quarter

Its third financial quarter was not an easy one for IBM, with sales down across most product lines and in many geographical regions, and profits down even after selling off its retail-store systems business to Toshiba. Total sales in the quarter were off 5.4 per cent to $24.75bn, and every part of IBM, including the Software …

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun read...

... when you do it in parallel with the email Ginni sent out to all of us this morning.

The spin internally is somewhat different (our numbers are actually UP - if you adjust for currencies). Though the data is essentially the same, of course.

AC, because... well, duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Fun read...

The internal spin never did match the external. Soo glad I left before they started the plan to reach $20 eps.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Red Ink

And it was all over their 3Q results. Rational being down by 15% should have the Fire Alarms going - It means they are losing developer revenue.And developers?Oh my. But that's ok, now they can just start charging for the free stuff.

Plus, you know they did everything they could to make the numbers as high as possible and still came up short - and significantly so in some areas. 4Q will be ok though, they have time to lay off massive numbers of people for the execs to keep their bonuses.

[Matt Bryant]

WebSphere up?

Good! It's one IBM product I do like, and if IBM are still winning in the middleware wars then that means Oracle's walled garden is getting a kicking. Bad news for IBM is it doesn't seem to be matched by a corresponding uptick in DB2.

[cashback]

Must be verging on panic stations in Armonk these days what with the 2014 EPS plan looking like a crock. All those exec bonuses tied to it will no doubt result in some more lunacy over the new few months.

[Anonymous Coward]

UK pension related charges

I'm surprised the article didn't mention the £100m hit IBM has allowed in the results for UK pension related charges for a recent loss in a legal case!

No doubt us poor UK-based employees will be made to suffer (where will the money come from?) with no pay rises forever more and more redundancies/cost-cutting.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: UK pension related charges

".....no pay rises forever more....." Many of the younger members of the IT industry seem confused by the mention of the mythical payrise, and I have great fun explaining to them how a "performance-related bonus" actually means no bonus even when they flogged their poor little hearts out all year.