IBM

The American multinational technology company known as the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), affectionately dubbed Big Blue, is headquartered in Armonk, New York, and operates in more than 175 countries worldwide. Renowned as the largest industrial research entity globally, IBM boasts 19 research facilities spread across a dozen countries, holding the record for the most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for an unprecedented 29 consecutive years, spanning from 1993 to 2021.

Established in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), IBM initially served as a holding company for manufacturers specializing in record-keeping and measurement systems. It underwent a name change to "International Business Machines" in 1924, swiftly emerging as the foremost manufacturer of punch-card tabulating systems. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, IBM's dominance soared with its pioneering IBM mainframe, notably the System/360, which cornered 80 percent of the U.S. computer market and 70 percent globally.

In the 1980s, IBM ventured into the microcomputer market with its groundbreaking IBM Personal Computer, widely recognized as the PC, marking one of the company's most successful products. However, due to oversight in intellectual property protection, IBM faced challenges from emerging competitors, leading to a decline in its market share. Nonetheless, the openness of the PC platform ensured its enduring popularity as a microcomputer standard.

From the 1990s onward, IBM embarked on restructuring initiatives, divesting from commodity production, including the sale of its personal computer division to the Lenovo Group in 2005. Subsequently, IBM shifted its focus to computer services, software, supercomputers, and scientific research. Its supercomputers consistently rank among the world's most powerful since the turn of the millennium, with a notable milestone in 2001 as the first company to amass over 3,000 patents in a single year, surpassing this feat in 2008 with over 4,000 patents. As of 2022, IBM holds an impressive portfolio of 150,000 patents.

As a venerable technology giant, IBM has been credited with numerous technological breakthroughs, including the automated teller machine (ATM), dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the SQL programming language, and the UPC barcode. Additionally, IBM has made significant strides in advanced computer chips, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructure. Its employees and alumni have received prestigious accolades for scientific research and inventions, including six Nobel Prizes and six Turing Awards.

IBM is publicly traded and part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, ranking among the world's largest employers with over 297,900 employees globally as of 2022. Despite facing relative challenges within the technology sector, IBM maintains its position as the seventh-largest technology company by revenue and the 49th largest overall, according to the 2022 Fortune 500. It consistently garners recognition as one of the world's most recognizable, valuable, and admired brands.