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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin K. Spurway who wrote (61004)	6/8/1999 5:16:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573689

Kevin - You'll be interested in this, I'm sure ! And I know that you know what is inside every one of those Dell PCs ! Dell dominates small-business PC market By Reuters Special to CNET News.com June 8, 1999, 11:50 a.m. PT URL: news.com NEW YORK--Dell Computer widened its lead in the U.S. small-business market in the first quarter, capturing 19.7 percent of PC shipments, the company said today. Citing newly published statistics from market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), Dell said its 20 percent share of the U.S. small-business market compares with a 14.2 percent share in the first quarter of 1998. The IDC report showed the Round Rock, Texas, PC maker shipped nearly two times as many PCs as its nearest rival to U.S. small and medium-sized businesses--defined as companies with fewer than 500 employees. The report shows Dell pulling into the undisputed No. 1 position for sales to small and medium-sized U.S. businesses, 15 years after founder Michael Dell sold his first PCs to local businesses from a University of Texas dormitory. No. 2-ranked IBM had a 10.7 percent share, up from 9.2 percent in the year-ago first quarter, according to IDC analyst John Brown. Compaq Computer, which a year ago ranked No. 1 in U.S. small-business shipments, sank to No. 3 in the first quarter of 1999. Deliveries during the quarter slumped to 10 percent from 18.4 percent in the year-ago quarter amid recent turmoil in the Houston company's business PC strategy. Paul Bell, senior vice president of Dell's Home and Small Business Group, said his company's accelerating growth rate benefited from the increasing attention Dell's rivals have given to efforts to compete with Dell's direct distribution. "As our major competitors have been talking more and more about direct sales, we are having a lot of small-business people who weren't customers before contacting us," he said. Dell is eyeing sales to small and medium-sized businesses as a key driver of future PC growth, offsetting maturing sales cycles to large corporations. Two-thirds of Dell revenues come from large corporate sales, with the remainder split between small business and consumer sales, a Dell executive said. Filling out the first-quarter rankings were Toshiba, the leading notebook PC maker, and Acer Group, the Taiwanese PC maker--neck and neck at No. 4--each with 5.5 percent of the market, IDC said. Hewlett-Packard was next, with 5 percent of the small and medium-sized business market. Most of the rest of the market is made up of so-called "white boxes"--low-cost, no-brand-name PCs assembled by local resellers who profit by providing installation and service to small businesses that cannot afford dedicated technical staff. White box makers and smaller-PC makers made up 31 percent of the market in the first quarter, IDC's Brown said. IDC counted shipments of 3.4 million PCs during the first quarter, which represented year-over-year growth of 11 percent in the U.S. small-business PC market. By contrast, Dell's unit shipments for this segment grew 53 percent year-over-year, nearly five times the industry growth rate, Dell said. "This is going to be the next battleground for the major PC vendors," IDC PC analyst John Brown said of the PC market for small and medium-sized businesses. "Sales to large companies are dominated by the top three--Compaq, Dell, and IBM; small and medium business is where the other guys--Toshiba, Gateway, and Micron [Electronics]--are trying to hang on," Brown said. Previously, another survey by market research firm ZD InfoBeads ranked Dell No. 1 in the small and medium business market, as well as the market-share leader in total PC shipments to U.S. businesses during the first quarter of 1999. Story Copyright © 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Go to Front Door \| Enterprise Computing \| Search