Is IBM fixing to sell its point of sale hardware and software business to Japanese conglomerate and sometime IT partner Toshiba? That's what a report in the Japanese business daily Nikkei says. Nikkei cites sources saying that Toshiba wants to give Big Blue ¥70bn, or around $870m at current exchange rates, to acquire the …

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Monday 16th April 2012 21:57 GMT Anonymous Coward

Let's hope this isn't the beginning of the end

IBM's retail stuff is what makes IBM, IBM - that sh** just works, all day, every day, 'cos people get mighty upset when they can't get money out of your wallet and into their POS system. It's not sexy, it's not fast, it costs too much and --ye gods-- it still comes in the funky beige case and electric blue buttons color scheme that gives Jonathan Ives seizures.

I hope IBM are not about to go all Twitter on us and will continue to sell boring but decent and profitable stuff like this to the planet.

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1. Tuesday 17th April 2012 10:36 GMT tirk
  
  Re: Let's hope this isn't the beginning of the end
  
  IBM haven't recently appointed a new CEO who used to work for Microsoft perhaps??
  
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Monday 16th April 2012 23:15 GMT Ross K

Market Leader?

Didn't Garner recently proclaim NCR to be market leader in retail?

At the rate Tesco are installing their self service tills, I'd believe it

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Monday 16th April 2012 23:39 GMT Anonymous Coward

RSS Sale

This unit has been on the block practically since IBM sold off PCs. I don't know why RSS didn't go to Lenovo with PCs. Still, these are ultra solid systems and keep the IBM brand in front of people. For less than a billion dollars, IBM's profit in about three weeks, it doesn't seem worth the bother of selling off the business.

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Tuesday 17th April 2012 11:06 GMT Anonymous Coward

With no PCs anymore, looking at an IBM retail display is as close as most people get to continuing brand recognition.

Get rid of that, the next generation wont know who IBM are.

My opinion is that the current thinking is that they think that hardware = constant physical input and expenditure = smaller profit, whereas software = initial expenditure but cheap replication = higher profit.

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1. Wednesday 18th April 2012 02:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  I agree, but....
  
  I agree that the POS gear puts the IBM brand in front of people and there is value in that placement branding, but I don't think it will be a major issue as far as relevance. Ask the average person walking down the street what Oracle or EMC sells and they will probably have no idea. IBM doesn't need to win over the average person walking down the street. They need to win over CIOs, IT executives, and line of business executives. POS was kind of a odd fit with the rest of IBM post PC divestiture.
  
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 17:39 GMT fschenk

IBM official announcement

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/37446.wss

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