IBM introduced new personal computers for business and government agencies Monday, renaming brand lines to simplify its approach to customers.
The change is the most visible result of an ongoing restructuring at International Business Machine Corp.'s PC division, which historically has been the world's largest seller of PCs but lagged behind Compaq, Apple and Packard Bell during the first half of the year.IBM continues to consolidate PC development and marketing from several cities to the Raleigh, N.C., area, its chief U.S. manufacturing site. The process will eliminate 1,500 of its PC division's 11,000 jobs during the next few months.
The machines available Monday, a mix of desktop models powered by 486 and Pentium chips and a notebook with built-in CD-ROM drive, were chiefly created after separate development teams of PS-2 and ValuePoint models got together. They contain several design and software innovations.
While IBM will retain two levels of desktop PCs for business, they will now be known as the 300 or 700 series machines, a numbering system the company has used for two years with its ThinkPad notebooks.
The 700 series replaces PS-2, which for nearly a decade was the flagship line of IBM PCs, and 300 series replaces ValuePoint, a lower-cost line that is two years old. Last month, IBM changed the name of its consumer models from PS-1 to Aptiva.
"You now will see most of the work we've done to re-engineer the IBM PC Co.," said Bob O'Malley, general manager for desktop systems, using a name IBM is expected to soon drop for the PC division.
The company is also trimming the number of variations in each brand line to increase its manufacturing efficiency. During one count last year, the company discovered it was offering PCs in more than 400 configurations.