Still working in Colonia Agrippinensis after all these days V
Hey, friends in Abelene, Paris, Munich, St. Pete and elsewhere...
Microsofts ExchangeServer is still fighting against Vinca's CoStandbyServer here... They don't accept me as referee (? - Schiedsrichter). Maybe I should wear a completely black dress and show them a yellow card. Nevertheless, now's time to take a breath.
Yesterday I bought finally a few Dell-calls. (20 Jan 2000 $ 75 @ 17 1/2). A small position for this winner, am I waiting for warnings? I don't know exactly what I'm doing.
Compaqs warning came right after I added 40 calls... However, Compaq's situation seems to me better than in broader markets sight. Simply said, I don't think that DEC is easy to integrate, but I don't fear that this new division will produce losses. On the other hand Compaq will win better acceptance for volume-orders of huge companies. This is not the next directseller (and not the main rival to Dell) but the successor for IBM, HP, SNI (...) as strategic supplier.
I see 3 main-levels:
Private customers and smallbiz with Gateway as marketleader
Midrange-companies and government mainly equipped by Dell and
Multinational companies leaving IBM & consortes as Compaqs strength.
IMHO it's not possible to run a company with parallel strategies for different market-levels. It's especially impossible to serve different marketing-channels the same time - most producers try it sooner or later, but mostly during phases of ongoing weakness and seldom with success.
Just my opinion, and I'm mostly wrong as everybody here knows.
However, let me add some consequences of this basic as gameplaying:
Sliding of competitors lowcost-system-sales (f.e. shop-chaines like Vobis) could go hand by hand with increasing marketshares of Gateway.
Difficulties of UNIX-resellers (e.g. Sun, Oracle) will show a transition to Wintel C/S-architectures in midrange-companies, enjoying (not only) Dell.
Weakness of IBM, HP... - systems would be a sign of strength for CPQ. No doubt that in this spheres big money can be collected from the street.
I'll stop here boring you.
Happy trading!
Jury |
