This is a message to Eckhard Pfeiffer (sorry if I misspelled your name):
Eckhard, my man, twice in it's short existence, Compaq has gone to AMD for CPU chips, in 1994 (could be off a year), and in the past 6 months.
In 1994, you pushed AMD 486's against Intel Pentium's. It seemed to me that you (personally) had a vendetta and a personal agenda against Intel. Unfortunately, the customer base:
A. Didn't share your agenda
B. Didn't buy 486's
You had an inventory problem that took a big toll on Compaq's results, and which took a long time to get rid of.
Then last year, you went to AMD K-6's in some models. I must say, I only detected a "trace" of vendetta this time.
But this evening, you made a rather disturbing announcement. Followed, almost IMMEDIATELY, by an announcement from DELL that they were NOT "feeling your pain".
Oh, buy the way, Dell uses ONLY Intel chips and is shipping 90% Pentium TWOs, according to their recent announcement.
Now I am not the CEO of a fortune 500 company, and you must be a very astute person to have risen to your present position. However, do you not see a common thread in these two periods of reduced financial performance by Compaq ?
Perhaps, just perhaps, there some cause and effect relationship between using Intel or AMD chips and a computer manufacturer's results in the marketplace.
Just perhaps. |
