About the same time, Japanese giants began eying the lucrative mainframe market both at home and abroad.

This sort of price haggling, once unthinkable in the mainframe market, delights corporate customers.

Yet analysts say the mainframe market will continue to shrink.

Analysts said there was no single factor behind the weakness in the mainframe market.

Digital officials also maintain that their surveys show increasing success in the mainframe market, an area where the company has never been a serious player.

Because the big companies dominated the mainframe market, they could keep prices high and realize large profits.

The mainframe market has been stagnant in recent years.

I.B.M. has about 70 percent of the $20 billion mainframe market.

It was targeted for a mainframe market, where many legacy applications tend to use a lot of very short tape volumes.

But before that the company's history stretches back to Itel, an early player in the mainframe market.