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IBM's PowerPC Delay Threatens Bid to Retake Initiative in Personal Computer Market

Strategic Insights

— 2 min read

IBM had high hopes for its PowerPC technology, an extraordinary alliance with Apple and Motorola, but delays in putting its powerful new chip into play threaten the company's bid to retake the initiative in the personal computer market. The new PCs, the brains of which are the PowerPC chips, will probably have few new programs to exploit their high-power features until well into next year, and an IBM partner in the chip effort, Apple, has been selling new PowerPC machines since March.

Key Takeaways:

  • IBM has given up plans of using the PowerPC chip to regain leadership in the personal-computer market this year due to product delays, software snags, and shifts in strategy.
  • The delay in launching the new PowerPC computers means the new line may fail to make much of an early impact on the market.
  • IBM executives maintain that their PowerPC effort is a long-range strategy and ultimately will extend far beyond their PC lines.
  • About 100 developers are creating applications for the PowerPC line, but many will be reworked versions of programs made for Intel-based PCs.
  • Software developers will have to wait until September to get pre-release versions of the basic layer of software for the PowerPC machine.
  • The PowerPC operating system, rewritten from IBM's OS/2, will not be completed for months, lagging behind the PowerPC hardware.
  • IBM is developing two other operating systems for the PowerPC line that are further along, but the redesigned OS/2 will not contain some important features, such as device drivers that run printers.
  • New operating systems almost always run late, but IBM faces added complexity due to its new software strategy called Workplace, which aims to devise a common underlying layer of software code that will run on almost every IBM computer.
  • Other software that is specifically written for PowerPC should outrun today's versions, but emulation technology will make these programs run slower than on Intel-based PCs.

Statistics:

  • 100 developers are creating applications for the PowerPC line.
  • Software developers will have to wait until September to get pre-release versions of the basic layer of software for the PowerPC machine.
  • The PowerPC operating system, rewritten from IBM's OS/2, will not be completed for months.
  • IBM is developing two other operating systems for the PowerPC line that are further along.
  • The market shares of Intel and Microsoft are expected to change with the introduction of new PowerPC hardware and software.
  • By the end of the year, Microsoft expects to ship a new version of Windows, code-named Chicago.
  • IBM will not meet its year-end deadline for the new OS/2 version.

Sources:

  • "Wall Street Journal"
  • "Gartner Group"
  • "RJR Nabisco Holdings"
  • "Motorola"
  • "Apple"
  • "Microsoft"
  • "Intel"

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