Wal-Mart BTO (AVAIL)
JohnO,
Thank you for a very interesting post.
I think this plan has the potential to be very successful; a LOT of people shop at Wal-Mart. However, I see some distance between concept and achieving a successful goal.
1) I think the immediate impact will be on the first time buyer market as well as the sub-1K market. The program will almost certainly increase US unit sales, but I have no feeling for how much it will pull from the established vendors in those market segments, i.e. CPQ, HWP.
2) A major factor for more sophisticated users will be the accessibility, accuracy, and reliability of customer service and guarantees. Unfortunately, the article makes no mention of that aspect.
3) As I am totally unfamiliar with AMGV or ACI, I'll (dangerously) extrapolate that large segments of the consumer population are also unfamiliar with those companies. I would anticipate that corporate buyers would be leery of committing their company futures to an unproven supplier. Educational institutions may be more inclined to use them, since they are always fighting a vicious budget battle. I don't think that federal government buyers can use them until they pass certain hurdles and get placed on an approved buying list.
So, near term (1-2 years), I don't think they will impact DELL much, if at all. However, if they are able to execute extremely well and establish themselves a reputation as vendors of economic quality and reliability, they may have the long term potential to compete in some of DELL's markets.
Didn't mean to be so verbose.
Questions to answer: if the computer is ordered from ACI Micro through Wal-Mart, who gets the revenue? How are the profits split? Is Wal-Mart simply functioning as a middle-man? Once (IF) ACI has established itself, is there no danger that it will enter into direct competition with Wal-Mart, thus cutting them out of a portion of the proceeds?
DELLish, 3. |
