IBM's Fragile Chip Business

The New York Times has posted an article discussing IBM's new Fishkill Plant and semiconductor strategy. The article touches on IBM's recent problems as well as the unique challenge of having a hybrid strategy of supplying chips to various industries.

And the company's approach to the contract, or foundry, business is to have close relationships with a couple of dozen customers that want advanced chips including Apple, Sony, Nintendo, Qualcomm, Nvidia and Xilinx.

This strategy differs from the other two extremes -- with Intel doing zero contract work, and large foundaries, with several hundred customers. Still, some analysts appear to be optimistic about IBM's future.

The article also contains the obligatory 'Man with Wafer' photo.