Linda Sanford, senior vice president of IBM Corp, speaks at the IBM Forum 2008 in Shanghai yesterday.

International Business Machines Corp has chosen Shanghai as the headquarters for growth markets, adding that it will add more "responsibilities" into China, Linda Sanford, the firm's senior vice president, said yesterday.

The new growth markets unit comprises Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), Latin America and REMA which consists of Russia, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Revenues from countries in IBM's growth markets unit rose 11 percent in the first quarter, representing about 17 percent of IBM's total revenue.

"The market conditions and requirement (between growth and mature markets) are so different that we should manage them differently," said Sanford in a interview during the IBM Forum 2008 held in Shanghai.

IBM has set up its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Shanghai since 2004. It also has set up payment, outsource service-delivery, procurement and software development centers in the city.

"IBM is playing almost all (department) functions in Shanghai and China," Sanford said.

Sanford is leading the company's "multi-year" transformation to provide high-value knowledge-based services and become globally integrated.

To achieve the transformation, IBM has sold manufacturing businesses like hard disk (to Hitachi) and personal computer (to Lenovo).

In the first quarter, IBM's profit was US$2.3 billion compared with US$1.8 billion a year ago.

(Shanghai Daily April 25, 2008)