To all: PRICE still dropping. I guess I will keep my powder dry a little longer. I suspect the current softness in the price is due to the IBM announcement yesterday and todays NEC announcement (below). However, be advised that neither firm ACTUALLY has a 64 bit processor currently deployed. JDN
NEC taps U.S., Europe with HP server deal
By Bloomberg News
October 4, 2000, 5:25 a.m. PT
TOKYO--NEC, Japan's giant maker of personal computers and chips, said it will supply high-speed computer servers to Hewlett-Packard for sale under the HP brand name, in a strategy to boost NEC's U.S. and European revenue.
HP, the world's No. 2 computer seller, will market the NEC servers in the first half of next year, said Scott Stallard, an HP vice president. The U.S. company will supply NEC with a Unix operating system for the servers.
Increasing Internet traffic worldwide is boosting demand from corporate customers that need servers to transfer data faster. The move helps NEC raise computer server sales in the United States and Europe, where HP has more brand recognition, said Kazuhiko Kobayashi, senior vice president at NEC.
"The alliance is perfect for NEC, which can take full advantage of HP brand image," said Kazunori Kumata, an analyst at Sakura Friend Research Center who has a "hold" rating on NEC.
Over the next three years, NEC aims to sell 2,000 of the servers, dubbed AzusA. Of that total, NEC expects HP to sell half, mainly in the United States and Europe, and plans to sell the rest through NEC sales channels in Japan and Southeast Asia, Kobayashi said. NEC hasn't decided prices yet.
HP will take advantage of NEC's server technology. In 1995, NEC allied with HP on servers running the Unix operating system and last year began developing AzusA, which uses HP's so-called IA-64 technology based on 64-bit processors and operating systems.
IA-64 was jointly developed by HP and giant chipmaker Intel. IA-64 servers, using Intel's as-yet-unreleased Itanium processor, will store more data and process it more quickly than the current 32-bit processor servers.
NEC and Intel last month said they would jointly develop and make motherboards for existing computer servers, in a move to cut costs and improve quality. Motherboards are the printed circuit boards used to connect chips and other key devices inside a computer.
Copyright 2000, Bloomberg L.P. All |
