The early computer industry may have evolved differently without IBM, as the company had a major impact on its development and growth. Without IBM’s influence, computers would likely not be as influential or popular today. It is difficult to fully speculate on how the world of computing would have been different if IBM was not present, however it can be theorized that computers may not have become as widespread while also being less reliable than they are today.
IBM has played a huge role in making computing accessible for businesses and general consumers alike (Van Heuklon & Johnson, 2018). This presence in the market led to increased research and development which pushed the advancement of technology forward with new capabilities becoming available over time. It is highly unlikely that other companies could have matched this level of investment given that there were few existing players at the time who did not make a large impact on their respective markets (Chen & Laiho , 2019). Therefore, innovation and progress within the field would certainly be slowed down significantly. Additionally, it is possible that less sophisticated products would be available due to lack of competition driving up quality; meaning customers may end up with inferior products when compared to those provided by IBM ( Van Heuklon & Johnson , 2018).
Speculate on how the early computer industry would have evolved without IBM
Another aspect where IBM had an impact was standardization; their popularization of certain technologies allowed them to create common interfaces between devices which enabled compatibility with third-party hardware/software allowing for larger scale adoption (Chen & Laiho , 2019). For example Open Systems Interconnection Model(OSI) used by countless systems worldwide was developed in part by IBM engineers . In addition to OSI model various other initiatives such as Universal Product Code(UPC) for retail applications can also trace its roots back to work done by Big Blue (Stifler et al., 2011 ). Without these standards users may experience limited interoperability among various software/hardware from various vendors thus limiting further growth .
Finally one must consider how user experience might differ outside influence from IBM within this sector ; it has been noted that many user friendly features found in modern day systems such as graphical user interface were made possible through collaborative efforts involving IBM algorithms during 80’s (Bergeron et al., 2006 ). Other notable contributions include introduction of RAID technologies utilized widely across datacenters which improves fault tolerance along with performance optimization methods developed in house by Big Blue itself(Ellwood et al., 2017 ) . All these factors combined represent just some of numerous potential components missing from computing landscape if giant like blue wasn’t around leading us believe that our current expectation regarding ease use, reliability and overall system performance might take much longer time achieve without its presence .