	ibm ibm rebound seen by bernstein analyst international business machines corp hit by a two year ings slump should begin a come back by the end of and post strong growth in analyst rick martin of sanford c bernstein co inc said there will be increasing momentum in ings albeit not until later this year martin said at a technology conference sponsored by the investment firm martin said the coming rebound reflects new product introductions in the mid range area rather than any drastic improvement in economic growth or u s capital spending ibm whose stock hit a week low of dlrs in mid january has come back lately ibm was trading up at dlrs analysts computer industry executives and the company itself have highlighted the external economic factors hampering ibm s growth but martin said the product cycle was key to understanding the rise and fall of ibm and other computer companies and pointed to digital equipment corp dec to support his view by replacing the product line ings have soared he said of dec s line of vax computers in contrast to dec ibm faultered with an incompatible mid range product line a new computer code named fort knox was supposed to tie together a number of ibm s mid range systems but the product never got off the ground he said instead aspects of the computer were integrated into the ibm machine introduced last year and other aspects should be unwrapped by martin said the major story will be a rebound in its mid range business he said sales of ibm s mid range computers fell about pct in but the new products will lead to pct growth in mid range computers this year and pct growth in high end computers primarily the sierra line are coming to the end of their product life cycle although growing pct in the midst of ibm s sharply lower year growth will drop to pct in and pct in he said by overall revenue growth should rise to about pct against pct growth in and pct in martin said last year ibm ed billion dlrs on revenues of billion dlrs investors asked what this all meant to dec whose ings and stock have been propelled by a strong slew of product introductions in the mid range area in response martin said he did not view ibm as a threat to dec nor dec as a threat to ibm because both companies were catering largely to existing customer bases rather than stealing market share from one another reuter 
