Paul, I'm a channel guy so you can guess that I am a little bit biased. I know from my own experience in dealing with resellers that they have very much loyalty from their customers. These 80,000 resellers and 20,000 integrator sales people like ENTEX, Vanstar, Microage, Inacomp and IE all have huge customer bases with relationships. If Compaq, HWP and IBM can keep their boxes priced competitively to Dell I think that the "big" boys have a good shot at keeping the 90% marketshare in the fortune 1000 marketplace. Sounds old fashioned but People still buy from People. Dell sells direct through the phone or the WEB, these 100,000 sales people sell face to face, it is easy to form a stronger relationship face to face than over the phone, trust me I know from experience. (my company is outbound sales oriented).
No one is questioning the fact that Dell has made great strides with their own market share, but I feel the majority of this marketshare has come from the likes of AST, ALR, Packard Bell, NEC and the thousands of "NO NAME" clones that are built in garages.
Now if Dell was to ever get into the low end business to the consumer and the SOHO I do believe they could make a real dent with their current model, but again, the corporate world is looking for more relationship, service and support than can be offered over a phone from Dell. Just my opinion from someone who will short Dell if it rises at all this week. If only the "dipsters" can come in one more time this week and drive it back up to 140 (70) then the real story with this stock can begin. On the other end I believe technically the stock needs to break down below 123 to produce an all out sell. |
