Tim,
I think your post, while sarcastic, is unfair. The $.50 price that you quote is ONLY on Awards BIOS for the sub $1000 PC market. About a half hour after the Conference Call, as he promised, Jack did get back to me. He told me that perhaps he was unclear in the CC, but that what I was concerned about had resulted because of the blending of Award's BIOS with PTEC's. He assured me that prices had NOT softened. He stated that pricing for BIOSs, he hoped, would firm as a result of the expansion into the Server Market. (I interpreted this to mean Intel's Xeon product). He went on to say that he hoped to get much higher numbers as we moved on, (in the three digits range for the Merced systems in the 2001 time frame).
We talked about PTEC's relations with IBM, which he said continued to be on a good note and he looked forward to an expansion of business from them this year. As for CPQ, he was also hopeful that business with them would expand. He said that the integration of DEC into CPQ had been a big hit for PTEC, as most of DEC's product line went into CPQ's commercial division and not into Compaq's consumer division. This was a big eye opener for me, and I am hopeful that over time PTEC can influence CPQ to be an all PTEC shop. Let's hope Jack's idea of one stop shopping, works.
Regards,
Jules |
