The following is an article that came from a electronics news letter
posted over on the Motely Fool's Board... I hope you find it useful.
Posted 19/02/99 10:01am by Mike Magee
Compaq to wing Sun -- like Icarus?
If anyone thinks that Eckhard Pfeiffer, CEO of Compaq, does not
have aims at world domination, let these few words in a Q&A at
the gruesome Landmark Hotel on Tuesday this week sink in.
"Who is the next Microsoft? That's what matters." You have to
search for the Nero inside yourself.
Pfeiffer has several strings to his world domination bow and one of
them is definitely the Alpha microprocessor.
According to pre-eminent Compaq watcher Terry Shannon (see
Shannon knows Compaq), his information is that a dual-chip
Goldrush will beat a quad Sun 450 system hands down.
This is the idea: keep the price of Alpha dropping until a system
using the ex-DEC chip costs about the same as a comparable PC.
Then go to Sun's customers and ask them why they're allowing
Sun to reap 50 per cent profit margins, while demonstrating that
Compaq's own -- equivalent or better systems -- only have profit
margins of single digits.
IBM and HP also get slightly bruised, but not as much as Sun.
Of course, Samsung is on a spree to cut the prices of its Alpha
chips by a huge amount, as previously reported here. Cunning, eh?
®
RegOid Alphalpha Son of Daedalus, Eckhard Pfeiffer flew with his
father Bill Gates from Crete but the sun melted his wax wings and
he fell to earth. This story has no connection with David Bowie
whatever.
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Let's hope Sunw has a response to such a ploy by CPQ. I believe SUNW could look at offering such customers the entire upgrade package including new storage solutions, an upgraded SOLARIS OS, customer consulting for new third party applications & easy implementation, and provide a very simple (and cost effective) guaranteed upgrade path through 2005... and longer!
EMC implemented such a "Radical" marketing approach by listening to customers;creating a community atmosphere among customers, served by employees and sales people who are expected to take a missionary's zeal to their work, and making marketing one of their top priorities...up to the CEO level.
EKS |
