Gary, I saw this one a couple of weeks ago. I loved the first sentence. Sales "shot up 15%," which counts the channel stuff and the mountain of receivables. And was still one of the five worst quarters ever recorded for unit sales growth. Some rebound. Though it was nice they backed up the Dell losing market share argument, and IBM and NEC/Packard Bell losing it for the full year (to screw up your good cos. beating up on the other 57% theory <G>), they made so many scam statements that I have to point them out to any who read the report:
1. "Corporations are steadily upgrading boxes." Actually, no they aren't and that is why the growth went negative in the industry last year and is accelerating to the downside this year.
2. Nary one mention of revenues, except to say that falling prices cut into them. Yup, and that danged hunk of ice was annoying for the Titanic passengers, too. <G> IDC, Dataquest, the media and every analyst on Wall Street are still afraid to say that revenues were negative last year. However, there is some chance that Barron's will blow their cover this weekend.
3. They revised their pc numbers for 1998 down to 90 million. If that wasn't a misprint, the disaster was worse than even Earlie had forecast.
4. Compaq lost US market share year over year in the 4th quarter???? Wow, we didn't hear that in their tricky eps announcement. <G> And with the channel stuffing and receivables, that is pretty scary.
5. IBM is growing SLOWER than the industry in units. Gee, I didn't hear Louis the Lip mention that tidbit in his pep talk conference call.
6. Dell lost 1.3% in the world's most important and profitable market. No wonder Mikey sold so many shares.
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