Micron..........................................
Micron Electronics Plans Aggressive Stance, Price Cuts in 1998: PC Company Will Look In-house For Core Logic, Silicon Expertise
<Picture><Picture><Picture>
Micron Electronics Inc. [MUEI] has made considerable inroads in the PC market on the strength of its Millennia product line and willingness to risk incorporating new technologies before other desktop makers. The company has also won high marks for customer service and embarking on its first national advertising campaign in late September, but has yet to raise its image to the level of direct-market competitors Gateway 2000 Inc. [GATE] and Dell Computer Corp. [DELL].
Multimedia Week Editor Judith Abrams caught up with Steve Moeser, Micron's vice president of desktop products, to find out what the company intends to do to increase its profile and what technologies the company is banking on.
Multimedia Week: What can we expect from Micron in the year to come?
Moeser: We're going to be more aggressive. We launched our first machine with our own core logic back in August. There's a lot more effort along those lines to try and differentiate ourselves both at the low end and the high end. It's hard to call things the low end because the low end is kind of a misnomer. We can do some amazing things with a performance box at a low price point. We're uniquely positioned there because we can create our own core logic. We understand silicon. Our other main competitors in the market don't have that ability. There's a group of people at the skunk works in Minneapolis and what they do is create technology.
MMW: Looking toward next year, what are the key multimedia technologies coming to market that you think will drive volume, particularly at the high end?
Moeser: I think you are seeing kind of a rebirth of video. I'd call it almost embryonic now with AGP. It's fabulous. What's going to get even more immersive over the next year is polygon fill rates exponentially higher than what we're doing right now as far as performance. We're enabling another way on the workstation side. We're enabling 66 MHz and 64-bit PCI, which is opening that pipe two times of what it is right now on a standard desktop and the video side of things. The Internet is still a driver. X2 is a wonderful thing. There are other things like ADSL and satellite technologies that could come along. Videoconferencing is starting to look pretty good, and it's very easy to use. It's come a long way over the last year and I think it's going to get better and better.
MMW: Is there anything you're planning on the marketing side or operationally to drive sales?
Moeser: We have a new Computers Now program [that launched in early November]. Our lead times have dropped substantially [in the last month]. For many of the products it's dropped from two weeks to between five and seven days. If someone wants to configure amachine it's out of here in a week. With the busy selling season coming up, there is going to be a focus on reducing lead times so the decision for the customer is that much easier.
MMW: How are you going to make these changes known to potential customers?
Moeser: We're advertising heavily now. We have some television ads that are more of a branding effort, but they do drive you to the 1-800-Micron PC number and the Web site. We're advertising majorly in the trade magazines right now in the weeklies and newspapers, those types of things.
MMW: Most companies have relegated multimedia more to consumer PCs than to business PCs. How important do you think multimedia is for your corporate sales?
Moeser: Our new line, the Client Pro 766xi announced at Comdex, will finally bring AGP to the corporate desktop. Customers are absolutely demanding it. _I want LX and I want SDRAM and I want AGP on my corporate desktop'. What I think's going to happen is a lot of converging. There's no reason that all the things your PC does at home as far as being the center for communications can not happen on the corporate desktop as well. There's no reason you can't combine your PBX and telephony features into that desktop and start reducing some of the costs of ownership. And the way you do that is by integrating logic. (Micron Electronics, 800/209-9686.) |
