"If you think this is an outlandish hypothesis, you don't know your computer history. IBM's first successful corporate computer was a mainframe called, coincidentally, the 360. It came to market in the 1960s and surpassed the hopes of IBM's very own CEO, Thomas Watson Jr. He thought world demand for computers would number only a dozen or so per year, yet IBM sold thousands of 360s. Then in the 1970s came a smaller, cheaper corporate computer, the mini. Digital Equipment and Data General (which inspired a bestselling book called The Soul of a New Machine) got rich selling them. But minis were eclipsed by workstations from Apollo and Sun in the 1980s. And now PC architecture, based on Intel chips, rules. Google's search engine runs off 120,000 cheap Intel servers. Enterprise software giants such as Oracle are writing applications around "grid computer" networks--i.e., gangs of cheap servers."
"Memo to Sam Palmisano: You make chips that run the world's coolest games. Now put some game into IBM's Global Services. Buy Electronic Arts."