IBM SLASHES JOBS ACROSS US, FATE OF 352,600 EMPLOYEES HANGS

IBM, a venerable 110-year-old pioneer in computing, has told the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg that it is axing a number of workers in the US but has kept mum on the fate of a total of its 352,600 employees worldwide, 95% of whom are working remotely.

Based in Armonk, New York, IBM withdraw revenue projections for the year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the company made a “tough decision” to withdraw revenue projections for the rest of 2020 after the company reported a 3.4% revenue decline in the January-March quarter from the same time last year. Its competitor, Hewlett Packard Enterprise also announced, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Sunday, May 24, 2020.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in April at his first quarterly earnings call as CEO that the company will continue to eliminate software and services that don’t align with IBM’s top two focus areas for growth: cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Once a household name for its personal computers, IBM shed its PC business in 2005 to a Chinese company and has since become focused on supplying software services to big businesses, governments and other organizations. It worked to strengthen its cloud computing business under CEO Ginni Rometty but has struggled to compete with top cloud rivals Amazon, Microsoft and Google. #coronavirusimpact #COVID19