IBM’s UK sales grew 10% in its latest financial quarter, its tenth consecutive quarter of growth in the market.
“[In Europe] the most consistent performance has come from the UK and Spain,” CFO Mark Loughbridge told investment analysts on a conference call. IBM’s Spanish division has grown for six quarters.
IBM’s revenues were flat overall during the quarter, at $24.7 billion. However, the company pushed net income up 7% to $3.1 billion.
The IT giant’s services division, which represents more the half of the company’s business, grew by just 1% over the year. Within the division, technology outsourcing increased by 2% to $10.0 billion while consultancy services dropped by 2% to $4.6 billion, due to “weakness in Japan and public sector”.
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Loughbridge said that IBM had seen a decline in application outsourcing and consulting, but business analytics and ‘Smarter Planet’ revenues grew 16% and 18% respectively.
IBM’s systems and technology unit, which sells hardware, dropped by 7% to $3.7 billion. Loughridge said this was because the division had a very strong quarter one year ago.
Sales of its System z mainframe range dropped 25% (in the year-ago quarter it few 40%) while the System x and POWER ranges saw flat sales year-on-year.
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Last week, IBM announced a new range of pre-integrated hardware and software stacks, entitled Pure Systems. Loughbridge said sales of this new line will “start to contribute to our performance in the second half” of the current financial year.
IBM also announced that it sold its point-of-sale machine business to Japanese electronics giant Toshiba’s POS division, TEC, for around $850 million. “Toshiba TEC will become the world’s foremost point-of-sale provider capable of providing products and services at the same level of high quality,” said CEO Mamoru Suzuki of the deal.
