A legacy of bad management. Whilst IBM might have a reputation of top research in the past, they've been cutting R&D in a very short sighted manner for many years now. That their revenue is declining and they need to cut staffing (again) is just them reaping what they sowed.
They've still done good research lately. This is just the nature of business I think. Eventually others catch up to where you are, and it is difficult to constantly remain competitive. A further problem in IBM's case, which maybe isn't as pronounced in other industries, is how quickly the computing landscape is changing.
Yeah I wasn't trying to insinuate that they don't still have a great research department. But you can only see so many cuts happening over the years without thinking that it'll impact their bottom line eventually.
Whilst I'm sure these ~100,000 are from services and sales - I'm equally sure that if they had something unique to sell in the first place, they'd be doing a heck of a lot better.
