Aloha, I have posted my sources a dozen times on this thread. OK, IDC is one and while you are on their web site, idc.com look at the article on PC unit growth of 12.3% from Jan 29, and revenue declines for workstations from 1/19, entry level servers, and High End servers from 1/18. The one area that showed minimal growth in revenues was pc servers, dropping to 8% a year from 40% the previous year and, as IDC mentions, very dependent upon an IBM channel stuff of heroic size.
So, you've got down revenues on workstations, entry servers, and high end servers, and up revenues on pc servers. The only place where you have to connect the dots is the biggest and most important of all, the pc market. The industry does not want the disaster there made public, so there are no revenue numbers published. However, as investors, we have to do a bit of detective work once in a while. We simply look for other sources to see if IDC's 12.3% unit growth and Dataquest's 15% unit growth are likely to result in revenue growth. Where to look? How about the world's largest pc retailer? CompUSA reports pc average sales prices down 20% in their earnings statement. How about the channel and VARs that distributes 70% of all pcs? We have a large number of cos. here, Ingram, TechData, Microage Compucom, Inacom. Report after report claims that pc sales prices were down 20-30%. Or, a bit more vague, we can look at the Dept. of Commerce's CPI report. They claim that computer asps were down 26% year to year. True, those were not all pcs, so we have to be careful in giving them too much credit. Or, we can quote a casually thrown out comment by the Intel CFO that ASPS had dropped about 25% for pcs and what bargains they were.
Are these hard data? Yes, but they are not conclusive for permabulls. They are the best we can do when the industry is stonewalling.
It is no secret that prices have come down. That is the ONLY reason unit sales went up last year. The question is how much? If anyone can prove to me that ASPs in the industry declined less than 12.3%, the growth in unit sales, I will be amazed and ready to ask a lot of questions. <g>
Unfortunately, when you invest, you do not always get good information handed to you on a silver platter. Especially when it is negative and the industry touts don't want the word to get out.
BTW, the pc industry has never had negative sales growth before. This is truly a historical time in which we live.
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