IBM's net income worldwide 1999-2019

As per the latest company data, IBM achieved a net income of 9.43 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, an increase of just over half a billion U.S. dollars from 2018. After experiencing a steady increase of net income over roughly a decade up to 2013, the company’s performance over the past five years has been somewhat uneven. Some of this can be attributed to a quickly evolving market environment. IBM is transforming its business following an industry wide change of digital transformation, shifting away from being a hardware, software and services company, towards becoming a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company. In 2016, IBM changed its segment reporting to reflect this directional modification, and realigned the software portfolio.

Adjusting to the era of cloud computing

IBM is now focusing on hybrid and multi-cloud, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) to better align its portfolio to market demands, and emphasizes strong integration between the two subjects. This combination is exemplified by IBM’s 34 billion U.S. dollar acquisition of AI open-source software company Red Hat was completed in mid-2019. Other significant acquisitions include data analytics and management services company Truven Health Analytics, and cloud object storage system company Cleversafe. IBM is aggressively expanding into cloud computing and data analytics, though it faces strong competition with cloud providers Alphabet and Amazon.