Bill,
You are only partly correct. The market is for the huge low-end
workstation market currently served by X-Terminals and PC's. IBM's
NEW strategy of selling NC's to current PC customers seems to be
working: They sold out of an initial production run of 500,000 units
late last year & they had to turn away orders they couldn't fill.
IBM did a study and found that NC's are cheaper to buy & use than
PC's by a factor of 2. They are also, by definition, more reliable
and servicable because they are sold by the manufacturer with service
& support warranties & contracts.
IBM, Sun, & Oracle are all well-positioned to take advantage of the
market for low-end workstations, now populated by PC's & they will
begin to have an impact later this year.
A signal for this will be declining revenues for Dell, CompUSA,
Compaq, Microsoft, or Intel. Both Dell & CompUSA have announced
lower-than-expected earnings for 4q 1996. This will mean that
corporate customers are delaying their upgrade purchases until they
have had a look at the NC.
We'll see if this trend continues over the next couple of quarters.
regards,
cherylw |
