- ASCII was never inteded for processing, just as an interface standard for data exchenage (hence the name American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
- IBM never switched, it still uses EBCDIC within mainframes and ASCII for communication.
- IBM was a major proponent for ASCII, but not the sole force, and especially not international.
- ASCII soared in international use in the 1970s as being recomended by ISO and ECMA - especially the later being the driving force due the huge variability withing Europe.
- (later) Mini computers and especially micro computers simply started out with using that code as well for processing as there is no reason for inventing a different (*1).
While being a main player, IBM alone would not have been able to force it. Similar a US buying order could not do it - after all, it requested only compatibility with ASCII for information exchange, not operation in ASCII. A loophole big enough for anything in existence and to be invented to slip thru. All needed was some interface to accept ASCII data and reply using it.
In the IBM mainframe world (*1*2) two basic codesets were used:
*1 - Then again, some did, like Commodore (PET) or Apple (Apple II) that private codes may be helpful - except, these got confined to special areas and hidden beneath.
*2 - That is IBM and all hardware compatible systems like Hitachi, Fujitsu, Bull, Univac, RCA, Siemens, ...