Do you think that we need companies like IBM? I mean, by the income metric Apple is obviously better than IBM. But, if there was no IBM, would the space be filled with multiple smaller and more profitable companies, or would there just be a void until some other company emerged as a "big, stable, uninnovative" behemoth?
I thought IBM was still doing some great stuff. Maybe not as profitable and cool as some more modern companies, but still very important things which actually do make the world a better place, albeit not making a huge profit. I might be wrong, ofc.
What IBM does is not exciting? Granted, they might not be working on self-driving cars, or motion-controlled video games, or God forbid, a tablet.
But the scope of IBM is almost breathtaking. Look into the capabilities of mainframes, consider for one second the amount of engineering required, and you will nerdgasm. They do tons of research in electronics, semiconductors and fabrication. They are at the forefront of computer science -- they beat Jeopardy, beat chess, and sequenced the human genome. Then they sell a ton of other things like huge, robotic tape libraries. Seriously, go see one in action.
A few $billion in profit per quarter is nothing to sneeze at either. (http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:IBM) I think the economies of scale play a big hand here -- I'm not sure if multiple smaller companies could eke a comparable, combined level of profitability, much less allocate resources for exploratory projects like Watson.
At the scale IBM operates at, Apple is essentially a one-hit wonder, being in a few very closely related consumer segments. It remains to be seen whether they can sustain their current momentum.
I thought IBM was still doing some great stuff. Maybe not as profitable and cool as some more modern companies, but still very important things which actually do make the world a better place, albeit not making a huge profit. I might be wrong, ofc.