AIM alliance

The AIM alliance was formed by Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola to develop the PowerPC processor.

History
On October 2, 1991, the three companies formed the alliance to counter Microsoft's and Intel's growing duopoly of their "Wintel" platform. The director of the PowerPC program at IBM was Bob Mansfield, who would later join Apple.

In 2004, Motorola's semiconductor division was spun off into Freescale Semiconductor. IBM's last contribution to the alliance was the PowerPC G5 processor. When IBM encountered difficulties in keeping up with Apple's product roadmap, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company would switch to Intel processors at the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference, effectively ending the partnership. Freescale CEO Michel Mayer stated that Freescale (and Motorola) had known of of Jobs' intention to move to Intel processors for 5 years. In 2015, Freescale was merged into NXP Semiconductors.

Articles

 * The Deal of the Century (or, The Alliance of Losers) by Jimmy Maher at The Digital Antiquarian (2020-02-07)