14 DAY TRIAL // Shortly after announcing an effort to expand into the mobile space with a suite of Enterprise apps, IBM is now laying off a whopping 26% of its staff in areas like mainframe and storage. Once a fierce rival formerly referred to as Big Blue, it poses little threat to Apple these days.
IBM’s profits have been on the low for the past three years. Last week, the corporation announced the 11th consecutive quarter of declining revenue.
Big Blue is not so big anymore
Dubbed Project Chrome, IBM’s massive layoff initiative will see staff reductions in areas like mainframe and storage, resulting in 111,800 employees being let go. This represents more than a quarter of its entire workforce (26%). The move is said to be directly tied to the company’s “transformation” efforts.
Despite what some investors might think, whether or not Apple was aware of Big Blue’s plans when it agreed to put IBM MobileFirst is not very important. The iPad stands to gain quite a few Enterprise users thanks to the duo’s partnership, but it remains to be seen how future operations relying on these apps will be handled without the appropriate staff to back them.
According to reports, this is IBM’s biggest layoff in the history of the corporation, beating its own record from the ‘90s when it let go some 60,000 employees. IBM’s market valuation stands at around $160 billion (€143 billion), which technically makes it possible for Apple to buy them and still have some leftover cash.