Beyond IBM's history of selling out key areas (printers, laptops, disk drives, etc.), it's the popularization of in-store tablets along with the integration of mobile and e-commerce. Retail Columnist Todd Michaud predicted in January that this year would see the death of the traditional POS. IBM apparently agrees.
IBM's move is not solely to abandon POS hardware - Toshiba is expected, more or less transparently, to handle all of IBM's existing POS accounts, including Wal-Mart, Costco and Toys"R"Us - but to focus on its infinitely more profitable software and services effort called Smarter Commerce.
