On Dec 21, 2011, at 2:16 PM, John Sessoms wrote:
> From: Bruce Walker > >> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 2:14 PM, Bob W <pdml at web-options.com> >> wrote: >>>> http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/economy-40/decline-kodak- >>>> offers-lessons-us-business >>>> >>>> A story on Marketplace, transcript and audio. Interesting reader >>>> comments also. >>>> >>>> Tom C. >>> they say it offers a lesson for US business, but IBM did the same >>> thing - >>> twice (DOS and Oracle) - and has managed to recover. >>> >>> B >> But IBM merely had to hire and/or shift software architects and >> developers into the rebuilding project and jump-start it. The >> infrastructure for computer software is all there. Just a comment: IBM actually sold one of its core businesses - computer storage (HDD) division to Hitachi in 2002-2003. IBM also sold its PC manufacturing to Lenovo in 2004-2005. http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/01/why-ibm-sold-its-pc-business-to-lenovo/ It restructured itself as a service provider as opposed to the hardware/ systems manufacturer. >> >> This article is pointing out how, if you let entire product >> categories >> go, then the manufacturing know-how, the staff, designers, all the >> infrastructure goes too. Think about another category that was big up >> until the 1970's then disappeared from North America: televisions and >> hifi. If the US wanted to build that consumer electronics again, it >> would have to start absolutely from scratch. There's nothing there. >> No >> supply chain, no designers, no manufacturing, nada. All TVs and hifi >> stuff is now made in the Pac Rim somewhere. > > Most of your computer components too. There may be some assembly > plants left in the U.S. It's interesting that while large portion of the HDD manufacturing these days is done in the SouthEastern countries, at least one operation is done, - at least for the largest HDD manufacturers, Seagate and Hitachi GST, - in the US: fabrication of the read-write heads for the HDDs. Once major and the most critical steps of the head fabrication is completed in the US, those heads are shipped to Asia to, to complete the operations, and then to the assembly plants. Also, I learned recently yet another interesting fact: Some India-based publishing companies (contractors for many US-based scientific journals) actually hire US-based copy-editors. If the journal prefers to hire US-based copy-editors, they pay higher premium, compared to the India-based copy-editors. Igor -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
