Skeeter, new pair of dimes taking place:
Reuss said a slowdown in PC sales to corporate resellers in the United States is hurting
earnings at Ingram, and Inacom.
Bottom line is that these middle men are being eased out of the picture. Who needs them? More and more companies are buying directly from Micron Technology, Dell, or Mom and Pop operations like HiQ. It's cheaper because that middle man had to get his palm greased too. There is incredible pressure to reduce cost at all companies nowadays and working out a middle man is a perfect place to start.
The resellers typically get PCs from the
PC maker directly and resell them to corporate users, with extra tailoring to fit their
needs.
Maybe in past years companies felt they needed these guys because of lack of confidence in their ability to specify the exact right components for PCs. Well, there is not much mystery left in spec'ing PCs these days. Now you can do what-ifs at Dell's or Micron's or whoever's site and see the price for any combination you want. No rocket science involved in deciding that, e.g., you definitely want the fastest processor, a bigger HD, more DRAM and the fastest web connection you can get for an intranet server vs. for a Win98 only box.
Whatever shortfall the Ingram Micro Inc's and Inacom Corp's get will be more than made up for by the Dells and IBMs.
As far as my being WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, if I am, I'll get in line behind Kurlak. Even he came out with 20% growth or so for Intel per year going forward. |
