 In 1998, Compaq acquired Digital Equipment Corporation, the leading company in the previous generation of computing during the 1970s and early 1980s.This acquisition made Compaq, at the time, the world's second largest computer maker in the world in terms of revenue behind I.B.M.However, Pfeiffer had little vision for what the combined companies should do, or indeed how the three dramatically different cultures could work as a single entity, and Compaq struggled as a result of a strategy that had the company caught in between the low end and high end.