Steve,
PC sales will be bigger than ever in 2000.
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__PC Market Will Peak In 1999, Says Forrester___
Corporate PC spending will peak in 1999 and then decline in 2000
before leveling off through 2002, according to a report released
yesterday by Forrester Research Inc. Among the pressures expected
to cut into supplier revenues: an end to the replacement cycle
spurred by the year 2000 problem; longer PC life-cycles; stronger
interest in PC alternatives; and more-vigorous price competition.
Business spending on PCs will hit a high of $55.4 billion in 1999,
up from $53.5 billion in 1998, according to Forrester. Spending is
expected to decline to $47 billion in 2000.
Two-thirds of companies surveyed say they'll focus their new
application development to support PCs with browsers and a new
generation of Internet-connected appliances designed to perform
specific tasks. "This change in the corporate computing environment
will enable IT managers to get more life out of their existing PCs
and to gradually replace them with less-expensive PC alternatives,"
says the Forrester report.
This transition will also result in price slashing and marketshare
battles that will leave only a few vendors, says Carl Howe,
Forrester's director of computing strategies services.
"The PC industry has always been going up, so they didn't have to
take share from each other to grow business," Howe says. "Our view
is that the top five will now get more share by taking it away from
second- and third-tier vendors. But when you're trying to steal
marketshare, the weapon is price, so even if you're winning you're
shipping more units but not gaining revenue." -- Eileen Colkin |
