Hi John,..Re:.Dell's management gave the impression that everything was under control..and only 10 days later, had to do a complete reversal...
Your memory is accurate.<g> The first of Oct. meeting they discussed component shortages being exacerbated by the earthquake. They were already short of LCD screens, (I bought a Latitude last of Aug. and it was not delivered until end of Sept.) and other electrical components.
Approximately 10 days later, they came out and warned about the quarter because of DRAM pricing. I was bothered by that since DRAM pricing had been increasing since July. See graph, courtesy of Jim Kelley.
macresource.pair.com
It turns out that they were subject to spot market DRAM because of the delays in Intel RMBS. But at the time, it looked like poor planning. Could this be why GTW rebounded after the company was forthcoming about this quarter? And why HWP rebounded in Oct. after being up front about their quarter last Oct.? I don't know the answers but I suspect a lot depends on keeping surprises to a minimum.<g>
Re:.I would agree that MDell needs to come out publicly (more) and talk about how the PC is NOT DEAD...in order to "even" the equation a bit....
I'm not sure I agree here. A MF manager on CNBC last Friday, when discussing SUNW and their competition named HWP and CPQ and IBM. No mention of Dell! This happened twice last week. When anyone speaks about the growing server market, whether high end enterprise type or web servers, they mostly refer to SUNW.
Since this is the high growth part of the business, I think it would benefit Dell immensely to 'reinvent' themselves as the solutions provider for all types of server applications.
Re:....the market has been throwing money at any fiber-optic, Linux, etc stock REGARDLESS of their track record.
When one considers the growth rate of broadband deployment, optical solutions for data delivery seem a no-brainer! <ggg> Disclaimer - long JDSU and SDLI. <g> See charts for their 'track record' and they are scrambling to deliver because capacity is limited. Remember LU said they fell short in the optical arena because they didn't anticipate the explosive growth.<g>
siliconinvestor.com
If you want to know more about optics, I have a link with slides which describes the new push - i.e. PC-centric to Net-centric.
Cheers,
Lee |
