Nadine, I hope you don't feel that everyone is picking on you. It is just that yours are the consensus viewpoints and it is a contrarian group on this thread. I appreciate your arguments as they make us think through our conclusions.
I am a bit tougher on Dataquest and IDC than most, and even tougher on AMAT, TXN, Dell, and INTC for their awful predictive power. My take on IDC and DQ is that they are good predictors of the year that just passed. That isn't a joke. It takes months to get in all the solid numbers and their early January guesstimates of what happened last year are pretty good. As far as forecasting goes, I've never seen them make a good one. As for the corp forecasts, it is obvious that those are marketing tools, not research tools.
TXN's and Dell's have been the funniest over the years, totally out of touch with reality. Dell has been so bad, they are extending the range or their pc sales predictions.
My prediction is that growth of pcs in dollar terms will be close to breakeven this year and possibly negative in 1999. Units will slip to 11 pct. growth this year and to 6 pct. in 1999. Y2k will eat everyone's lunch and lack of innovative, gotta have products will take all the Twinkies. -g- Good Luck, MB |
