John, (re: soft quarter so far)
also, as Micheal Murphy correctly notes (one of the only times I have seen him say something correct :) ) OEMs how are basing their models on Dell, ie, the order their chips for delivery the next day, or even later that day, so they will have no inventory essentially. This is basically what Dell does, they have no warehouses, just trucks backed up to an assembly plant. Gateway on the other hand ran a more traditional operation holding some inventory, and we all know what happened there! My feeling is that many OEMs are now trying to mimic Dell, and hold very short inventories of parts.. so, if this quarter is soft at the beginning, it still may end very strong if xmas season turns out to be decent.
Darin |
