Regarding those dropping PC prices...
Those of you who have been following my posts on
the Dell bull thread regarding future personal computer
prices (and the consequences to the industry)
will be interested to find the following (apparent)
repost of a www.thestreet.com column:
How Low Can PCs Go? Not Much Lower
from Herb Greenberg at the street.com
Is that the sound of crunching PC margins in the
background? Quite possibly. It's all hush-hush, but I hear
from normally reliable sources that four Taiwanese PC
makers are planning to announce as early as next week at
PC Expo in New York a new line of desktop PCs priced at
$299, $399 and $499. Currently, the cheapest models cost
around $700. If all goes well, the ultracheap PCs should be
rolled out at retail in time for back-to-school. Each machine
supposedly will use a 233-megahertz Cyrix chip, with the
cheapest model sporting a black-and-white monitor.
Execs of Acer have been talking for months of their desire to
roll out a $300 PC. But such low prices hadn't been
expected for at least another year. "Nobody is quite ready
for those kinds of price points," says hardware analyst
Stephen Baker at PC Data, which has been predicting that
two-thirds of all PCs sold in the fourth quarter will be priced
below $1,000 -- double the number sold in that price range a
year earlier.
Today, however, the typical storefront PC shop can build and
sell a decent machine for as little as $500 -- not benefiting
from the lower prices associated with mass production.
Which companies will be behind the cuts? The only clue: A
story in Wednesday's AsiaBizTech news service reported
that Acer, Leo Computer Systems, Synnex Technology
and Mitac International were slashing the prices of
computers equipped with Intel's (INTC:Nasdaq) Pentium II
to around $800.
Some analysts say that such rapidly falling prices may
spark demand -- at least initially -- but not enough to offset
the cuts. Not good news for an industry still trying to unclog
a stuffed pipeline of higher-priced merchandise.
exchange2000.com
Note that the $299 PC (with monitor) is in line with what
I have been predicting for prices 2 or 3 years out. But these
prices are for this fall, though it includes only a black
and white monitor.
This is the beginning of the end. When this sort of news hits
the street over the next few weeks, I don't see how anybody
could interpret to be anything but the death knell of the
PC industry. Or at least that part of it that depends on
high priced PCs for revenue.
-- Carl |
