Re: problems from last Q.
I recently went shopping for a PC in mid-April. I
needed a 400 Mhz for my small business soon.
Called MUEI, Quantex,GTW, DELL. The first
three couldn't get me a 400 Mhz until around
May 12. Dell promised the first days of May. I
ended up ordering from Unicent cuz they said
I'd have it in 5 days. It took over a week.
During that week, I noticed Circuit City had a
sale. 400 Mhz Pentiums from HP and NEC. For
less than the direct systems, with the only major
difference being less RAM and no monitor (with
$100 64 MB chips and $350 17" monitor the
prices equilibrate). I called to cancel, but Unicent
promised to ship it next day air. Didn't happen.
Even if Dell had made its promise, HP and NEC
had products at retail with the same components
in better time.
Dell, Gateway, and Quantex all told me
that the delay was waiting for the 400 Mhz
chips. Yet HP was quicker to the draw
even though it had to deal with the channel.
The net of it is if I could do it all over, I'd
walk on down to the Circuit City. My feeling
is that the channel is not yesterdays dishwater and
that it is just a matter of learning to do it
right. Could the JIT inventory model become a
timing liability if/when HP and IBM do the
channel right and Dell is still having to assemble
each PC as ordered. IOW, JIT doesn't need to be
in the channel, and and the channel may just have
been caught with its hands down. HP and IBM
don't need the PC margins of a Dell. Their cost
of equity is much lower, and they are much
more diversified. Even if I were a high end
customer requiring service and many machines,
why would I choose Dell? Cost was never
an issue except for Micron. All were pretty
much in the same ballpark.
When I see predictions of 40% into perpetuity, I
am confused. The recent 40% number is part of a
downtrend. Especially when I think that IBM is
developing technologies that could lay the
foundation for next-step chips and Intel's next
generation chips are a 50/50 with HWP.
Good Investing,
Mike |
