IBM's hardware division had a 35% profit on sales in the last quarter. In most businesses that would be considered tremendous. Unfortunately for IBM employees its not enough to drive up the stock price. That's the only decider. That's what's driving the stock repurchases and the layoffs. Meet the EPS goals set by management so they get their bonuses. Short term planning rules.

Mainframes are a growing business. They're failing with their Unix boxes, same as Oracle. They can't compete with Linux. The other area where they are failing is in sales of retail systems. E-commerce and iPads are killing their intelligent cash register.