Jeffrey Immelt?s visit to Bangalore had a good bit of build up to it. GE?s public relations machinery ensured that there was enough pre-event publicity for a man who is US president Barack Obama?s jobs council chairman. Being the chairman and chief executive of GE, he immediately qualifies for a say in policy matters in the US and thus makes news wherever he goes.
Now, Immelt is not a very popular man in the US. His critics believe he is instrumental in moving jobs out of the country. Immelt?s move to shift the headquarters of its 115 year old x-ray business to Beijing, received severe criticism and so his visit to an emerging market like India was looked upon with great interest.
The man, evidently, has a very straight forward style. He gets into the act immediately with the press and did not waste much time with niceties. Very American indeed. And plus he made the right noises too. A new $200 million manufacturing plant in Pune was the new announcement. ?We?ll create 2,000 jobs with that plant,? he said. I am not sure how Americans would have taken it, but it was great news for India?s developing manufacturing story. The plant will focus on localising GE products for the Indian market.
Soon after he made the announcement, he then had to tackle questions on outsourcing, shipping jobs abroad etc, and he handled them with aplomb clearly showing how well prepared he was for these questions. But he was quite clear about one aspect. He very vividly spelled out the importance of emerging markets. Immelt said he considered growth in emerging markets as a counter to the slowdown in the advanced markets.
By the time the man finished, one couldn?t help wonder about his ability to be Obama?s right hand man, and still continue to create jobs elsewhere. That?s the beauty with globalisation; it?s pretty difficult to turn the clock back! The GE supremo surely knows which side of his bread is buttered.
IBM goes past Microsoft
IBM continues to impress. It has now gone past Microsoft to become the world?s second-most valuable technology company. IBM?s market value jumped to rose to $214 billion on Friday, while Microsoft?s fell to $213.2 billion. Now, this has not happened since 1996, and hence that?s a significant achievement for Big Blue. Clearly, this shows how the world is turning away from personal computer business. IBM had walked out of that space six years ago, to focus intensely on services. And that has now proved to be a very clever move.
IBM had sold off its PC unit to Lenovo in 2005 and then spent more than $25 billion in its software, computer-services and consulting businesses?a move that has paid rich dividends. The $100 billion firm is getting stronger by the quarter.
But still Apple is the undisputed leader here with a market capitalisation of $362 billion and it would take some serious work on IBM?s part to get anywhere near it. But for the moment, it?s celebration time.
Dell on a China mission
For Dell, China matters a lot. And it showed last week. On Friday, it launched a new ultra thin laptop there. The new product called XPS 14z is scheduled to debut in other markets only later this year. Dell calls it the world?s thinnest laptop?just 23 mm. China, according to Dell, is the world?s largest PC market and surely the country can now start to dictate PC trends. Dell has always been strong in the US market, but with Lenovo chasing it down pretty hard, it knows it has to penetrate China better.