Nice story on PC sector in WSJ focussing on CPQ mishandling their warning.
interactive.wsj.com
Some extracts...
After all, they pointed out, the rest of the PC makers weren't exactly battening down the hatches. Only a day before Compaq issued its warning, Dell Computer Corp. (DELL) impresario Michael Dell held an upbeat meeting with investors in which he said that industry demand looked healthy. On Tuesday, meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HWP) CEO Lewis Platt called his company's PC sales "healthy, growing and profitable."
"We talked to Dell, IBM and H-P and they're all feeling pretty good about their PC businesses right now,' said Merrill Lynch's Steven Milunovich.
"If there's an industry problem, we would have heard from Intel by now," remarked a still-irritated Wu. "Compaq made up 13% of Intel's business last year. The fact that Intel hasn't preannounced a shortfall says 87% of the world is doing OK."
... and 5fer still doesn't get it re Dell's direct sales model... His excess overhead allowed him to miss estimates by 1/2 after stuffing the channel again; yet he insists that his repeated failures are "clearly superiour". :-)
I find this amazing. I would have expected much better from 5fer. But I'm happy to hear him sticking to what made him successful in a different world. ... one less competitor in this one.
Analysts took aim at Compaq's "customer choice" sales model: The company sells its product through retailers, but has also been developing a direct-sales operation along the lines of Dell's, making its machines available via phone and Internet orders. Pfeiffer defended that model, saying it lets customers decide how they want to purchase Compaq products and that it is "clearly superior" to a strictly direct model.
But is it? Analysts contend that the model has angered computer resellers, increased costs and confused customers instead of empowering them. "Customer choice is all well and good but when it reaches customer confusion, that's another thing," argued Laurie McCabe of Summit Strategies Inc. |
