Editing IBM System/38 (section)

==Sales==
IBM sold an estimated 20,000 System/38s within the first five years of availability, according to articles published in industry magazines NEWS 34/38 and Midrange Computing. Although billed as a [[minicomputer]], the S/38 was much more expensive than IBM's established best-selling System/34, and its replacement, the System/36. Of equal importance was the difficulty of upgrading from a System/34 to a S/38. IBM tacitly acknowledged this by bringing out the System/36 – an upgraded System/34 – after the launch of the S/38. Although the System/38 did not sell in large numbers, it commanded a higher [[profit margin]] than IBM's other midrange systems, and thus was a profitable product line for IBM.<ref name="schleicher-interview" />

In the marketplace, IBM thus found itself with three overlapping, but incompatible, ranges. The System/34, the System/38 and the mainframe [[System/370]] architecture. [[Digital Equipment Corporation]], at that time one of IBM's main competitors, was able to exploit this by offering a wide range of products based on a single architecture - specifically the [[VAX]] architecture.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Silverlake Project: Transformation at IBM|author1=Roy A. Bauer|author2=Emilio Collar|author3=Victor Tang|year=1992|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195067545}}</ref> IBM's counter to this, the [[IBM 9370|9370]], was a commercial failure, and at that time, ''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote, sales of the System/36 and System/38 were "lagging."<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]]
   |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/29/business/a-broad-decentralization-at-ibm.html
   |title=A Broad Decentralization at I.B.M.
   |date=January 29, 1988}}</ref>