System i revenues drop again

This is getting to be like a broken record, but System i revenues dropped again, this time 13 percent, in the first quarter of this year. It is the sixth consecutive quarter that year-over-year revenue has gone down. IBM said weak upgrade sales on the platform caused the decline.

Compared to the same quarter two years ago, System revenue is down about 33 percent. That’s a hard slump.
This time, System i’s drop was in the midst of gains on all other platforms: systems z, p and x. It’s not for lack of investment by IBM. In the last year it introduced a VoIP solution with 3Com exclusively on the System i, as well as new entry-level System i boxes.

But analysts say System i suffers from a marketing problem.