It wasn't that long ago that IBM was easily the most dominant tech company in the world… the king of its industry.

Back in the 1980s nearly every large company, government, and institution used IBM's products and services. It was the ultimate.

Yet over the last 30 or so years, IBM went on to miss literally every single major tech trend in the industry's history. 

Initially they totally owned the PC market… and then lost all of their market share to smaller rivals like Compaq and Dell.

They dominated in software… until that division too faded into obscurity as Microsoft became the industry leader.

IBM completely missed the Internet revolution. They missed mobile. Social. The cloud.

While Apple was launching the iPod and iMac, IBM randomly decided to spend billions of dollars of its shareholder's capital to buy a consulting division from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

They briefly tried their luck at enterprise services, but then got embarrassed by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

IBM has basically been directionless for years, frustrating even Warren Buffett.

Buffett was a longtime shareholder of IBM, and as an investor he's notorious for holding his positions 'forever'.

But even someone with Buffett's long-term thinking got fed up with IBM's lackluster performance and rudderless leadership… and Buffett finally dumped all of his IBM stock earlier this year at around a $1 billion loss.