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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SS who wrote (65367)	7/20/1999 7:52:00 PM
From: Piotr Koziol	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

FINALLY some good news :^) Retail PC Shipments Rise 32% in June, Spurred by Free PC Offers Reston, Virginia, July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Retail shipments of personal computers rose 32 percent in June, the best growth all year, as consumers flocked to snap up rebates from Internet access providers that made some PCs free, a research firm said. Revenue rose 6.1 percent in June, also the best performance this year, according to PC Data Corp. of Reston, Virginia. More than 50 percent of PCs sold cost less than $1,000 and about a quarter cost less than $600, PC Data said. The average price fell 19.5 percent to $890, the research firm said. The growth came largely because of a flurry of $400 rebates offered by America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Prodigy Communications Corp. that made some PC models free and knocked others down to less than $500, attracting lots of buyers. The growth is even more impressive given that Microsoft's Windows 98 was unveiled in June 1998 and spurred strong sales that month. ''The free-PC thing really sparked a ton of sales at the end of the month -- that's where the growth came from,'' said PC Data analyst Stephen Baker. That helped boost shipments for No. 1 Compaq Computer Corp. and No. 2 Hewlett-Packard Co., Baker said. International Business Machines Corp.'s shipments fell for the month because the computer maker didn't have an inexpensive machine to compete with the rebate offers. Intel Corp., the world's largest computer-chip maker, continued to regain market share, as its chips were in 59.1 percent of all PCs shipped in June, up from 55.6 percent in May. Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s share fell to 32.8 percent in June from 36.5 percent in May. June also marked the first time in a year that Intel's chips were found in more sub-$1,000 PCs than AMD, PC Data said. Intel slashed prices this year and accelerated introduction of new processors to win back market share from AMD, which it lost when AMD had better low-cost products. Apple Computer Inc.'s iMac was the No. 1 selling PC in June, PC Data said. Jul/20/1999 16:59 For more stories from Bloomberg News, click here.