Barron's January 2, 2000
Steven Milunovich, managing director of equity research for Merrill Lynch. "Our
surveys find that the 'below e-line' traditional companies should be heavy
spenders," he adds.
In fact, the B2B market could easily become 10 times larger than that for
B2C. "It may be 'clicks and mortar' after all," he concludes.
The sell-side analyst also thinks that 2000 should be "the year of the
appliance." Information appliances should take off, with Research in Motion's
Blackberry doing well, 3Com's Palm unit going public, and a number of other
appliance-related companies considering IPOs, he says. In this group, he also
likes Network Appliance and Cobalt. "For now, investors will want to be
invested in the sector and sort [out the winners and losers] later," he says.
Milunovich adds that asking which hand-held device will be the big winner is
the wrong question. "It's not a matter of what will be the device," he
emphasizes. To make his point, he cites a recent survey of 70 corporate chief
information officers by Merrill Lynch indicates that 22% of them plan to buy
personal computing devices for their employees this year. "There's new
evidence that corporations are going to start buying these things in a significant
way," Milunovich says. |
