Gary and Intel Investors - HP to Introduce $799 Pentium MMX/200 PC and $1099 Pentium II/233 MHz PC
Yousef has come across this latest news.
Intel is now THE MARKET LEADER in the sub $800 category - HP in addition to Compaq is now using Intel's Pentium MMX chips ina sub $799 PC - I guess that means Intel is back to 85% market share of every market segment!
Check out the latest prices for HP's PCs with Intel Inside.
Paul
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news.com
HP delivers $800 PC
By Jim Davis
January 5, 1998, 12:05 a.m. PT
Hewlett-Packard(HP) (HWP) will stage what
can only be described as an ambush on
other competitors in the low-cost consumer
PC market today, making it clear that HP
isn't content with being a follower in this
increasingly important segment.
HP has apparently decided that it will cede
no further ground to market-leader Compaq
(CPQ) with the introduction today of several
aggressively priced Pentium and Pentium II
systems, including a fully-configured $800
system with a 200-MHz MMX Pentium
processor.
It has become clear to vendors--painfully so
for some--in the last 12 months that being
successful in the PC business means
offering attractive systems in the sub-$1000
segment. Preliminary data from market
research firm Computer Intelligence
indicates that 40 to 42 percent of all PCs
sold in December cost less than $1,000.
HP raises the stakes with the new Pavilion
3260. This includes a 200-MHz MMX
Pentium, 32MB of memory, a 2.1GB hard
disk drive, a 16X CD-ROM drive, and a
56-kbps modem for $799. This is the first
200-MHz MMX Pentium system with these
features from a major vendor at this price
point.
HP is also upping the ante for systems
priced between $1,000 and $2,000, another
area where Compaq and Packard Bell have
been successful. HP today introduced the
Pavilion 8240 with a 233-MHz MMX
Pentium, 32MB of memory, a 4.0 GB hard
disk drive, a 24X CD-ROM drive, and
56-kbps modem for $1,099. This also beats
similarly configured systems from Compaq
by a few hundred dollars.
HP's assault doesn't stop with Pentium
systems. The Pavilion 8260, priced at
$1,699, comes with a 266-MHz Pentium II,
CD-ROM drive, 512KB cache memory, a
4GB hard drive, and a 56-kbps modem.
Compaq has gained market share over its
rivals in the consumer retail market in large
part due to the success of its lower cost
systems. In the third quarter of 1997,
Compaq increased its total market share
from 13.5 percent to 18.8 percent in the U.S,
according to International Data Corporation
(IDC).
Hewlett-Packard has been less aggressive
than Compaq in the consumer PC market,
though it has been offering the Pavilion 3100,
a 166-MHz model which goes for $899 at
some retailers. In the third quarter, HP, the
number five vendor in the U.S., went from 5
percent to 7.1 percent of total PC sales,
according to IDC. By comparison, IBM (IBM),
a vendor that entered the sub-$1000 PC
market late, has seen growth stagnate, while
Toshiba has decided to exit the U.S.
consumer market altogether because it
simply decided it couldn't make money in a
market increasingly dominated by
sub-$1,000 systems.
HP will emphasize its reputation for quality as
it attempts to make headway against
Compaq. The company says that it conducts
stringent tests on all of its systems. "Even
consumers paying less than $1,000 want
high-quality, easy-to-use multimedia PCs
they can trust to work" said Harry McKinney,
general manager of HP's Home Products
Division.
HP is also emphasizing the use of Intel
processors in the new systems. To date,
many of the PCs in the lower end of the
market have used Intel-compatible
processors such as the Cyrix MediaGX or
the AMD K6 processor, but HP has gone
exclusively with Intel's Pentium in the
consumer segment. |
