After 16 quarters of continuous decline, IBM’s latest financial quarterly report reveals the company has generated revenues of just $18.68bn, a 14-year low for the tech giant.
In the face of an ever-changing and competitive market, IBM is struggling to win financially, despite putting increasing emphasis on its cloud and mobile computing business, with its first quarterly report for 2016 showing declining revenues.
According to its report, IBM made revenues of $18.68bn in Q1 2016, marking a decline of 4.6pc on its previous report, yet surpassing market analysts’ expectation, which had predicted $18.29bn.
This follows a similar pattern to Q4 2015, when it too surpassed market expectations but the company’s shareholders weren’t impressed. The results led to a fall in share price for the company in after-hours trading.
Cloud and data analytics need to catch up
The biggest issue, it appears, is that while it now sees cloud and mobile computing as its future key earners in the company, its more traditional areas of revenue continue to slide, quite dramatically in some cases, such as its hardware business experiencing a 21.8pc decline this quarter.
This compares to the combined increase of 14pc experienced by its newer, focused products within the cloud and data analytics areas.
IBM did, however, announce something of a win, with the return of $1bn to the company as part of a tax refund following the resolution of a “long-standing tax matter”.
IBM sign image via majestic b/Shutterstock
