Hi Meathead; Thanks for the admission "Ok Bilow,
you win." that I was right and you were wrong,
though you could have phrased it in a less sarcastic
manner. I think it takes a real man to admit in public
when he was wrong. (This was regarding the cost
of building PCs.)
Now for some more quotes, links and comments:
Quotes from latest Barron's: (June 15, 1998, p. 61)
Tales from the Valley: Earlier this month, Hambrecht &
Quist chip analyst Robert Chaplinsky made an intriguing
call on Intel. He cut his earnings estimates for the
June quarter to 65 cents from 69 cents and warned that
microprocessor unit sales would be down 8%-10% from
the March quarter, with a 3% drop in average selling
prices. Chaplinsky cited weaker-than-expected retail
PC sales, high industry inventories of older Pentium
-based machines and seasonal weakening of European sales.
But the whispering on the Street is that inside Intel,
there's concern Chaplinsky's call was uncannily accurate
-that perhaps he had taken advantage of his Intel
connections to get information others on the Street
might not have at their disposal.
Note that the above comment would indicate that there
is weakness in the Intel portion of PC sales. Thus the
move to competitors of Intel, and therefore cheaper
PCs. But the article explicitly continues:
There's certainly evidence of weak PC sales. Dataquest
last week said first-quarter PC sales in the 10 Asia/
Pacific markets fell about 20% from a year earlier, to
$2.8 billion. Sales fell 82% in Indonesia, 62% in Thailand,
55% in Malaysia and 46% in South Korea. Also last week,
International Data Corp. estimated worldwide second-quarter
PC unit growth at just 9%. With prices continuing to fall,
revenues will rise even less; IDC sees "little relief to
the tough pricing environment." One final gloomy note:
The Semiconductor Industry Association last week said
global chip sales in April fell 0.5% from March, and 6.8%
from April 1997.
Barrons on line needs membership, but here is the link
if you got it. Otherwise go down to your local news stand:
interactive.wsj.com
-- Carl |
