But Big Blue's profit up by 21 per cent and vendor is bullish for the coming year

IBM has announced a 21 per cent increase in profit for its first quarter 2006 results, despite a decrease in turnover.

Big Blue reported profit of $1.7bn for the quarter compared to $1.4bn in 2005. However turnover slipped 10 per cent compared to Q1 last year to $20.7bn.
In terms of regions, the Americas Q1 turnover decreased three per cent and EMEA turnover decreased 14 per cent and Asia-Pacific turnover decreased 21 per cent. OEM revenues increased 26 per cent to $873m.

Sam Palmisano, chief executive of IBM said: “We continued to improve our profit performance with our strategic focus on higher-value segments of the marketplace, as well as with our emphasis on productivity and global integration. Our performance underscores the strength of our business model across a balanced portfolio of software, services and hardware and demonstrates the benefits of the strategic actions we’ve taken in recent years to reposition the company.

"Our cash position remains strong. After investing in our business and returning nearly $3bn to investors, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of more than $12bn, significantly above a year ago. Our clients continued to demonstrate that they value IBM's ability to help them innovate," he said.