History (1999): IBM in $8 Billion 7-Year Pact With Acer

IBM Technology Group and Taiwanese PC manufacturer Acer group have announced a 7-year $8 billion pact.

Acer will purchase HDDs, microelectronics, networking and display technology from IBM to integrate into its computers or screens, some of which, incidentally, it manufactures for Big Blue.

Is this just marketing hype calling attention to a cooperative relationship between both parties that has existed for some time now, or is this a veritable move toward a greater scale of collaboration?

In any case, IBM’s strategy with its larger OEMs these days seems to be one of evolving from the classic buyer-seller relationship to a longer-term partnership.

Acer was already a major IBM client for HDDs, and in fact, the new accord largely involves these devices.

This agreement follow a series of pacts previously announced by IBM: $1 billion with Nintendo, $3 billion with EMC and $16 billion with Dell.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 138 on July 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.