IBM's sales slump for 11th quarter in a row

Big Blue says it is positioning itself for the long term as Q4 sales fall across each of its five core units

IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty claims her firm is making significant headway in its transformation as it registered its 11th straight quarterly fall in revenues.

For the three months ending 31 December, Big Blue saw revenues fall 12 per cent year on year to $24.1bn (£15.9bn), with sales falling across each of its five core units.

Stripping out divestments, including the sale of its x86 business to Lenovo – the handover for which occurred in the UK only on 1 January – revenue fell two per cent, while net profit fell 11 per cent to $5.5bn.

EMEA revenues fell 13 per cent to $8bn, with sales here falling one per cent adjusting for currency and divestments.

Some of IBM's traditional strongholds may be flatlining but Rometty claimed the bets Big Blue is making in buzzy areas such as cloud, mobile and security are paying off.

"We are making significant progress in our transformation, continuing to shift IBM's business to higher value, and investing and positioning ourselves for the longer term," Rometty (pictured) said.

"In 2014, we repositioned our hardware portfolio for higher value, maintained a services backlog of $128bn and achieved strong revenue growth across cloud, analytics, mobile, social, and security. Together these strategic imperatives grew 16 per cent in 2014 and now represent $25bn and 27 per cent of our revenue."

Bereft of its x86 business, the Systems and Technology Group (STG) saw revenues nosedive 39 per cent.

Global Technology Services sales fell 7.6 per cent, Global Business Services was down 8.4 per cent, Software decreased 6.9 per cent and Global Financing fell 0.5 per cent.

On the plus side, however, IBM claims its cloud revenues leapt 60 per cent during the quarter to $7bn, with mobile revenue tripling, security revenue rising 19 per cent and business analytics up seven per cent to nearly $17bn.

On an earnings call, a transcript of which can be found here, IBM senior vice president Martin Schroeter said IBM had seen "strong customer interest" in its partnership with Apple around apps.

"Through our Apple partnership, we released the first 10 MobileFirst for iOS solutions in the fourth quarter, with more to come by the end of this quarter focused in Healthcare, Energy and Utilities," he said.