Technical Flaws Delay Introduction of IBM Product

International Business Machines Corp. suffered an embarrassing setback today when it announced that technical difficulties had forced it to cancel the introduction of an important new disk-storage product for its mainframe computers.

IBM shares were off $1.625 to $111.125 as investors worried that the delay in the new unit would cause short-term earnings to suffer. Sales of the device had been expected to reach $1.5 billion in 1990.

Announcement of the new product, which had been scheduled Tuesday, was canceled at the last minute after the computer manufacturer said tests had revealed problems. The company gave no indication of when the disk drives would be available.