From The Wall Street Journal:
International Business Machines Corp. is moving the headquarters of one of its biggest divisions to China.
IBM is to announce today that it will relocate the head office of its global procurement arm to the southern city of Shenzhen from Somers, N.Y. The division maintains relationships between suppliers and IBM’s businesses around the globe.
The move signals a growing outward shift for IBM, one of the U.S.’s leading technology companies and the second-largest software provider in the world in terms of sales after Microsoft Corp.
China is increasingly a key market for many tech companies. In 2004, the country overtook the U.S. as the world’s largest exporter of high-tech goods such as laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras, exporting $180 billion in products compared with the U.S.’s $149 billion, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Last year, IBM sold its struggling personal-computer business to Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd.[Full Text and Subscribers Only]
