Jim, there's some disinformation going on somewhere here if Apple says that it is discontinuing 1100 resellers that only average $9000 in sales a year and we've got posters and people being quoted in news articles who say they are selling $500,000, $2,000,000, etc. Where's the truth? Hard to puzzle out.
I have the same fears as c-man if Apple thinks it can go direct-only. I don't see much hope for the Mac platform if that happens. As I've posted, I'm in AAPL right now as a value play. Still a lot of low-hanging fruit, but the company needs new products or Windows-convergence by the end of 1999 or Apple will begin to shrink again.
Looks like Apple is fixing the iMac modem problem and I have to assume that there will be low-cost USB printers available by introduction.
C-Man, hope you stick around or at least post more frequently. Btw, if CompUSA does have an initial order of 70,000, that works out to 500 per store. Way more than your speculation that that's just a number that will fill the shelves. It looks to me that Comp may be trying to get Mac cpu revenue up to 20% via the iMac.
Alomex, many have multiple Macs, so the number of real users is in doubt. Everybody I know who bought a Mac in 1996 then effectively retired their current Mac. I touch my LC II about five times a year now. However, it seems to me that the number to focus on here is the ten million Macs that have been sold into the home. Since Mac unit volumes were highest in the early to mid-nineties, I assume that a big pct. of the ten million are still in use and ready for upgrades. My hope is that the iMac can sell in a 1-4 ratio to "new to the Mac" users. That's it.
Btw, MacWeek is going to focus on publishing, graphics, etc. Still a huge Mac focus in the magazine.
Marc |
