"...Compaq and Hewlett-Packard may be among the first top PC makers to jump on the design bandwagon"
Wednesday January 6, 6:10 pm Eastern Time
PC style now as important as megahertz after iMacs
By Duncan Martell
PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan 6 (Reuters) - With the runaway success of Apple's sleek, egg-shaped and translucent iMac,
staid personal computer makers are discovering they may need to move beyond beige boxes to woo customers.
Building on the iMac's success, an ebullient Apple chief Steve Jobs on Tuesday showcased new, faster iMacs in a
rainbow of colors at the MacWorld in San Francisco, the trade show where the Mac faithful gather twice a year to pay
homage to the company that developed the ''computer for the rest of us.''
Yet while the ''Wintel'' duopoly of chip colossus Intel Corp. and software giant Microsoft Corp. are due credit for
developing the PC ''for the most of us,'' the importance of design isn't lost on either of them.
''The iMac was a great wake-up call for the industry, because Apple appeals to simplicity,'' Paul Otellini, one of Intel's most senior executives, said in a
round-table discussion with reporters on Monday. ''We all need to get away from beige.''
It's not just the beige box -- with all the design elegance of a coat hanger -- that consumers may want changed.
As Apple works to simplify using and upgrading its Macs, consumers may start demanding the same from traditional PC makers such as Compaq Computer
Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Gateway Inc., Dell Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
''My God, someone (Apple) finally thought to put a door on the side of a computer,'' said Kimball Brown, an analyst at Dataquest, a market research firm, of the
new G3 tower computers announced on Tuesday that echo the iMac and sport a door and carrying handles.
''Hopefully that'll put pressure on people to make better boxes. I don't want to deal with 10 screws to put in a little piece of memory.''
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has already sold 800,000 iMacs since their introduction in August, and it topped the list as the best-selling computer in the U.S.
retail market in the final three months of 1998.
''We would ask our customers about what they wanted in a disk drive or a processor and they would come back and ask, 'But can I get in green?''' Jobs,
Apple's interim chief executive and co-founder told Reuters on Tuesday.
''Color is for most consumers more important than all the mumbo jumbo over megahertz and megabytes,'' Jobs said.
''The machine itself from a technology standpoint was hardly revolutionary; what was different were the aesthetics,'' said Daniel Kunstler, a computer analyst at
J.P. Morgan in San Francisco. ''And they sold 800,000 of the things -- that's got to be telling you something.''
Of course, there have been different ''form factors'' of PCs on the market for some time. A Korean computer maker, for example, is making an
Intel-Microsoft-based PC in an iMac-like design and small start-ups are also selling all-in-one designs similar to the iMac.
''There will be a rush to design things that look a little bit cool, but that raises the question can you reach really low prices with offbeat designs and do you have
the volume to justify the expense of the industrial design?'' Kunstler said.
For Apple, the company is playing to its core customers -- graphic designers, publishers and creative folks -- who are more likely to respond to avant-garde
designs, analysts said. For a PC giant like Dell, though, it might not make as much sense because the company gets the bulk of its profits selling boxes to
businesses.
Kunstler said Compaq and Hewlett-Packard may be among the first top PC makers to jump on the design bandwagon.
Even so, making computers in different colors alone raises thorny inventory questions. ''How many tangerine iMacs vs. grape ones should be at CompUSA on
Stevens Creek (Boulevard),'' in the heart of Silicon Valley, Brown said.
''The other guys aren't going to go to colors, not until it's proven they have to,'' Brown said. ''Henry Ford did have it right: if you just want transportation, a
black car is just fine.''
Or, at least until consumers start pounding the table for more choices in colors, designs and other accoutrements such as doors on their PCs. (Nasdaq:AAPL -
news) (Nasdaq:INTC - news) (Nasdaq:DELL - news) (NYSE:GTW - news) (NYSE:CPQ - news) (NYSE:IBM - news) |
