Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!killer!vector!nobody From: telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: IBM Sells Rolm To Siemens AG Message-ID: Date: 14 Dec 88 06:16:00 GMT Sender: chip@vector.UUCP Lines: 32 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-Submissions-To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 8, issue 200, message 1 International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) announced on Tuesday that it was selling its Rolm telephone equipment subsidiary to West Germany's Siemens AG. Rolm has lost several hundred million dollars since IBM bought it in 1984 for $1.5 billion. Rolm was the first, or one of the first companies to market digital PBX systems. As most readers of [Telecom Digest] already know, the PBX market has been very soft for years. It has suffered from little or no growth and very bitter price competition. Siemens, a leading PBX supplier in Europe wants to bolster its sales in the United States, and believes it can do so by aquiring Rolm's sales and service operations. Quite obviously, it will also gain access to some of the lucrative IBM customers in Europe. Rolm was an early leader in digital PBX's, but they were surpassed in 1984 by AT&T and Northern Telecom Ltd. of Canada. Part of the strategy behind IBM's purchase of Rolm was IBM's belief that small personal computers would be linked through digital PBX's. Although this has happened, most businesses seem to prefer ethernet arrangements; something neither IBM or Rolm had given much thought to. IBM was certain the late 1980's would see office computers everywhere hooked up through PBX's. IBM made a mistake, and at Tuesday's press conference they admitted it and announced that Rolm was going bye-bye, as part of the corporate restructuring which has seen IBM divest itself of numerous non-computer related businesses in the past several months. From its beginning until 1984, Rolm could not run itself very well; now IBM has washed its corporate hands. Time will tell how much luck the Europeans have with it. Patrick Townson