OT My answer re: pc growth, intc, cpq is as follows:
PC growth is OK in unit terms. Neither great nor terrible. Europe fairly strong, US moderate, Asia slow but from a low base.
Underneath that macro view you have a real trend towards lower cost PC's that is hurting intc. Margins coming down. Selling prices/revenues coming down as unit sales remain strong. Cpq has distribution model changing problems, as well as a lot of exposure to the terribly thin margin sub 1k computer space.
Personally I think Intel/cpq are in for problems for some time. That's because I don't see the need to move beyond the power afforded by early 97 level processors (166-266 mhz Pentium MMX) for some long time.
While there are still lots of sales to companies etc. that haven't yet upgraded to that level, and lots of new sales of sub 1k computers to late adopter individuals, the highest growth period is waning.
You say we've all heard that many times before but always there has been unrelenting upgrade pressure.
Well, things have in fact changed. I never used to think my PC was powerful enough. And it wasn't. You know, would run a single humongous dos program fast enough, but sluggish under windows 3.1. The next one - OK under 3.1 one program at a time, but sluggish under Win95 if logged in to the net at same time and running three or four programs.
Now my 233mhz 13.1 inch mega ram laptop does everything I want just fine, except net related. That could be MUCH faster.
I can also see the day when I will want bigger than even my 5 gig hard drive. But I can just slide in a bigger one. What I really want is a cable modem attached to my 10/100 mhz lan connector in the port replicator.
But when that happens I'm still not sure I'll want a faster computer. Maybe, maybe not.
And that is the first time I've said that in 15 years of using the things. This is also the first laptop I've had that I think is good enough. All others have been almost the best available at the time, but still inadequate screen, too slow, drive too small, etc. Now my screen is about as big as I would want on a laptop.
(The other thing that MIGHT demand higher speed processors is natural language processing, when it gets common and cheap enough. Msft is working on it.)
I'm not saying that the upgrade cycle has ended forever with mid 200mhz processors. I'm just saying I think it is slowing down, or at least temporarily plateaued. (And sure, if a thin 25" monitor doing 2000x3000 resolution, with matching hyper speed graphics 3D chip, was available, THAT would be cool. But faster CPU? And if anyting, Win98 is FASTER than Win95 with equivalent horsepower, from what I've read. NT 5.0 with a Win98 interface MIGHT inspire some hardware upgrades, but mostly in quanties or RAM wanted.)
My tech is 0% PC, mostly internet / telecom related, some enterprise software.
Doug |
