>> since there was an huge and artificial PC upgrade cycle in 1999-2000, that there will be an echo upgrade cycle
John, I think the upgrade never stopped occurring. Yes, there was a bulge in 1999-2000, and some of that was due to Y2K concerns. But a large amount was due to the dot.com scam. Of course the dot.com PC's were auctioned off cheap in 2001, which robbed the usual demand. And also, the excess PC's due to dot.com usage will not be upgraded. I mean all those servers, and routers in the Exodus buildings. When Exodus and other such providers went bankrupt, most of their customers also were bankrupt, and did not need to find another alternative.
However, where I think the forecasts are missing is the demand from "white box" makers. Especially in India and China. These are non-brand PC's. They will not show up in the revenue of Dell or HP. But they do use a processor and a disk, a manin board, and memory. This demand is currently estimated by Western Digital's CEO to be approx 44% of PC's. And it is growing much faster than the name brands.
Otherwise how to explain the increased rev update from Intel AND AMD. The increased guidance from Maxtor AND Western Digital. So it is not just a shift in market share. Now one might cite Micron as the contr-indicator. But that is due to the suicidal competition in memory that will not be cured by any demand increase. And the other component, Main Boards, is not made by any American companies, so you never hear about that. But those unit counts are up also.
Our earliest actual earnings peek will come from the newly public Seagate on Jan 9. I think they will report earnings and unit sales far exceeding anyone's published forecast.
Sarmad |
