When personal computers were first becoming manufactured in the 1980s, IBM started working with Bill Gates to refine the computers and make them better. At the time, Bill Gates had developed Microsoft and IBM started to find ways to incorporate Microsoft. The mistake, and bad decision-making, came in when IBM just paid Gates for his services, but did not have him commit to working solely with IBM in the software market. You can read about a history of the relationship between IBM and Gates here:
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm
IBM thought that they would dominate the market in hardware and decided not to worry much about the software side of computers. Considering Gates's massive success with Microsoft, IBM missed out on a major opportunity through a partnership with Microsoft.
Surely IBM could not predict just how popular home computers would become, but should they have tried to expand their business by adding the software instead of focusing on dominating the hardware market? What could they have done differently once they discovered how popular home computers were? Could they have tried to partner with or create another software company to compete with Microsoft?
Casey Zimmerman
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