Stitch,
A little more about GE and e-commerce:
GE Supply QuickLink and Oasis--
ge.com
Jack Welch --Letter to shareholders
"The opportunity for growth in product services is unlimited. We have the ability, using high- technology services, to make our customers' existing assets (e.g., power plants, locomotives, airplanes, factories, hospital equipment and the like) more productive, and by doing so reduce their capital outlays. This growing capability, much of it information technology-based, will enable us to increase our revenues from product services by more than 30% in 1998 — to $13 billion. "
ge.com
Moving faster on electronic highway--
"Moving faster on the electronic highway
With the economies in our primary served markets so strong, GE ED&C rang up a record year with across-the-board double-digit sales increases. We are busy. Fortunately, the continuing rapid development in electronic commerce is helping us keep pace with this growth. The significant gains being yielded by our Six Sigma quality improvement program are being matched — with the help of electronics — by our ability to deliver better, higher performing products to customers in less time.
Twenty years ago, when a fax machine required special paper and it took six minutes to transmit a single page, it was considered a luxury. Today, some businesses fax lunch orders to the local deli in a minute. And if that timeframe is too cumbersome, just select a menu item from the deli's web page and the order is placed nearly instantaneously. Technology has certainly changed our lives and the way we all do business.
A challenge we all face is how to utilize that technology to competitive advantage. How do we harness the enormous power and complexity of computer-to-computer communications to improve service, grow volume, reduce costs and generate opportunity?"
ge.com
....and on and on.
This is the kind of stuff that keeps my long term money comfortably invested in GE, IBM, MSFT, CSCO, EMC, INTC. There really is no sense in even talking about those companies--buy 'em, hold 'em, pass them on to your children.
Things like eBay, RDRT, WDC, SEG (arguable) are interesting to talk about, may be profitable to trade or hold over intermediate terms but aren't really what this is all about.
My big money is on the technology gorillas and the future benefits of e-commerce and connectivity.
Of course I could be wrong but, if I am, a whole lot of investors are going to have a rough retirement,
Yogi |
