That was only obvious in retrospect, and has very strong survivor-bias: it might as well have sunk the company, and IBM would have been completely unknown today.

Also, things are a bit different today: IBM is largely a services company, which doesn't lend itself well to inventory building. Also, they have struggled on the merit of their offerings, not the economical climate, for a very long time. Doubling down right now is not obvisouly going to end well.