IBM

International Business Machines Corporation
IBM
FormerlyComputing-Tabulating-Recording Company (1911–1924)
Company typePublic
ISINUS4592001014
IndustryInformation technology
PredecessorsBundy Manufacturing Company
Computing Scale Company of America
International Time Recording Company
Tabulating Machine Company
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
FoundedJune 16, 1911 (1911-06-16) (as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company)
Endicott, New York, U.S.[1]
FoundersGeorge Winthrop Fairchild
Charles Ranlett Flint
Herman Hollerith
Headquarters1 Orchard Road, ,
United States
Area served
177 countries
Key people
ProductsAutomation
Robotics
Artificial intelligence
Cloud computing
Consulting
Blockchain
Computer hardware
Software
Quantum computing
Brands
Services
RevenueIncrease US$61.860 billion (2023)
Increase US$8.690 billion (2023)
Increase US$7.502 billion (2023)
Total assets Increase US$135.241 billion (2023)
Total equityIncrease US$22.613 billion (2023)
Number of employees
282,200 (December 2023)
SubsidiariesList of subsidiaries
Websiteibm.com
Footnotes / references
[5]

International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue,[6] is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries.[7][8] IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021.[9][10][11]

IBM was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems. It was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924 and soon became the leading manufacturer of punch-card tabulating systems. During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe, exemplified by the System/360, was the world's dominant computing platform, with the company producing 80 percent of computers in the U.S. and 70 percent of computers worldwide.[12]

IBM entered the microcomputer market in the 1980s with the IBM Personal Computer, which soon became known as PC, one of IBM's best selling products. Due to a lack of foresight by IBM,[13][14] the PC was not well protected by intellectual property laws. As a consequence, IBM quickly began losing its market dominance to emerging competitors in the PC market, while at the same time the openness of the PC platform has ensured PC's longevity as the most popular microcomputer standard.

Beginning in the 1990s, the company began downsizing its operations and divesting from commodity production, most notably selling its personal computer division to the Lenovo Group in 2005. IBM has since concentrated on computer services, software, supercomputers, and scientific research. Since 2000, its supercomputers have consistently ranked among the most powerful in the world, and in 2001 it became the first company to generate more than 3,000 patents in one year, beating this record in 2008 with over 4,000 patents.[12] As of 2022, the company held 150,000 patents.[15]

As one of the world's oldest and largest technology companies, IBM has been responsible for several technological innovations, including the automated teller machine (ATM), dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the SQL programming language, and the UPC barcode. The company has made inroads in advanced computer chips, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructure.[16][17][18] IBM employees and alumni have won various recognitions for their scientific research and inventions, including six Nobel Prizes and six Turing Awards.[19]

IBM is a publicly traded company and one of 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It is among the world's largest employers, with over 297,900 employees worldwide in 2022.[20] Despite its relative decline within the technology sector,[21] IBM remains the seventh largest technology company by revenue, and 49th largest overall, according to the 2022 Fortune 500.[20] It is also consistently ranked among the world's most recognizable, valuable, and admired brands.[22]

  1. ^ "Certificate of Incorporation of Computing-Tabulating-Recording-Co", Appendix to Hearings Before the Committee on Patents, House of Representatives, Seventy-Fourth Congress, on H. R. 4523, Part III, United States Government Printing Office, 1935 [Incorporation paperwork filed June 16, 1911], archived from the original on August 3, 2020, retrieved July 18, 2019
  2. ^ "IBM Is Blowing Up Its Annual Performance Review". Fortune. February 1, 2016. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2016.
  3. ^ "IBM – Arvind Krishna – Chief Executive Officer". www.ibm.com. Archived from the original on March 8, 2022. Retrieved March 8, 2022.
  4. ^ "IBM Newsroom - Gary Cohn". IBM Newsroom. Retrieved March 8, 2022.
  5. ^ "US SEC: Form 10-K IBM". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. February 26, 2024.
  6. ^ "IBM100 - The Making of International Business Machines". www-03.ibm.com. March 7, 2012. Archived from the original on October 5, 2018. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  7. ^ "Trust and responsibility. Earned and practiced daily". IBM Impact. June 27, 2019. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  8. ^ "10-K". 10-K. Archived from the original on December 5, 2019. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  9. ^ Bajpai, Prableen (January 29, 2021). "Top Patent Holders of 2020". nasdaq.com. Nasdaq. Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
  10. ^ "2021 Top 50 US Patent Assignees". IFI CLAIMS Patent Services. January 5, 2022. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  11. ^ Gil, Darío (January 6, 2023). "Why IBM is no longer interested in breaking patent records–and how it plans to measure innovation in the age of open source and quantum computing". Fortune. Archived from the original on January 27, 2023. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
  12. ^ a b "IBM | Founding, History, & Products | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  13. ^ Press, Larry (2003). IBM PC. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. (published January 1, 2003). p. 833. ISBN 0-470-86412-5.
  14. ^ "Origin of the IBM PC | Low End Mac". lowendmac.com. Retrieved February 19, 2024.
  15. ^ "IBM Tops U.S. Patent List for 28th Consecutive Year with Innovations in Artificial Intelligence, Hybrid Cloud, Quantum Computing and Cyber-Security". IBM Newsroom. Retrieved July 14, 2023.
  16. ^ Helmore, Edward (December 4, 2023). "IBM unveils new quantum computing chip to 'explore new frontiers of science'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved February 14, 2024.
  17. ^ Carter, Sandy. "The Evolution Of AI: From IBM And AWS To OpenAI and Anthropic". Forbes. Retrieved February 14, 2024.
  18. ^ McDowell, Steve. "IBM Realigns Its Storage Business To Match Data-Driven Enterprise Needs". Forbes. Retrieved February 14, 2024.
  19. ^ "About us". IBM Research. February 9, 2021. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  20. ^ a b "Fortune 500". Fortune. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  21. ^ Schofield, Jack (January 21, 2018). "IBM shows growth after 22 straight quarters of declining revenues, but has it turned the corner?". ZDNET. Ziff-Davis. Archived from the original on March 10, 2023.
  22. ^ "IBM Brand Ranking | All Brand Rankings where IBM is listed!". www.rankingthebrands.com. Retrieved December 30, 2022.