IBM ships 100,000,000th PC as GITEX kicks off

IBM sold its first personal computer, the machine that revolutionised the global computer industry, in 1981.

'The first IBM Personal Computer revolutionised the market in its day, bringing desktop computing to the world's business and home buyers. Today we're still innovating, still bringing machines to market that redefine the personal computing landscape,' said Imtiaz Ghani, manager of IBM's personal computer division in the Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. 'We're set to make a major notebook security announcement at GITEX 2004 on Monday that will once again affirm the clear technology leadership that has marked IBM's presence in this market.'

The first IBM PC contained a number of important innovations which are still core elements of today's PCs over 20 years later, including open architecture card slots for expansion of the machine using add-in cards, a separate monitor, CPU and keyboard, BIOS-based firmware and a revolutionary 16 bit processor and operating system. The machine had a processor speed of 4.77 Mhz and standard RAM of 16 Kbytes, with floppy disk storage of up to 160 Kbytes per disk. One model of the machine at the time used a tape cassette for data storage to keep costs down!

'Today's machines are perhaps a bit more powerful, but the architecture of the PC has stood the test of time,' said Ghani. 'Just ask 100 million IBM customers!'