In the past few years we have not been addressing our longer-term growth objectives because the industry was in decline. We felt it would be naive to talk about growth when we knew our customers weren't spending. But in 2003 we said that the industry had stabilized and I would characterize 2004 as a year when the IT industry will begin its next growth cycle.
Let me just say once and again that we are proud of our accounting and disclosure practices. We hope this issue is behind us and we'd like to move on.
We remain on track for your consensus earnings per share estimate for 2001, which is consistent with our longer term business model.
IBM's strategy is to deliver superior business value through the fusion of business and technology.
At that time, we also recognized that we'd feel price pressure in PCs and hard-disk drives. And our expectations here were right on track as well.
Services now represent nearly 50 percent of IBM's revenue.
We believe that the recent changes to the 2002 revenue and [earnings per share] estimates for IBM better reflect the current realities of the marketplace.
There was a lot of business in the pipeline, but we simply failed to close contracts.
Based on where we stand today, we expect to make these estimates.
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