I think its more just an awareness issue of one of the largest, oldest, deepest tech companies in the world, a US based company, has now shifted its employee foot-print out of the US... and yes, it is based on economics for the company, as you say.

So I think the real takeaway here is that IBM is no longer a US based company, per se - but now is just a global tech company.

And you might even say they are the first of the giants to just be simply a "lobal tech company" -- while many a startup are already "global" or virtual as it were -- its just an interesting shift in the timeline of IBM as a company.... and thus relevant and of note when looking at the company IBM itself.