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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Calvin who wrote (139936)	8/19/1999 8:58:00 AM
From: Calvin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

New PC Brand Slashes Dell's Lowest-Priced Desktop Prices by 20% -- Aims At 10% Market Share Within 24 Months Business Editors/High Tech Writers MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 19, 1999-- IDC Estimates Indicate a 27% Growth in Worldwide PC Market -1-World PC's Will Target the Hot Sub-$800 PC Market Segment International Data Corporation announced on July 26 that the second quarter year-to-year worldwide PC unit growth reached a whopping 27%, fueled by the lower PC prices. Earlier this month, Dell (Nasdaq:DELL) announced its Optiplex(R) GX 100 PC, the company's lowest-priced desktop PC for corporate and institutional users, starting at $829. Today, Autoco.com (OTC BB:AOOO) announced that its Royal Oak Technologies, Inc. subsidiary is going to launch its own sub-$800 computer brand, 1-World. Royal Oak Technologies, even though still a fairly unknown entity in the PC industry, has a long track record of creating successful brands. In Canada, Royal Oak took AST computers from less than a million dollars in annual retail sales to over $100 million a year by 1997, making AST the number one selling retail computer line in Canada for over 36 months (source: IDC), increasing its market share to 16%. As a comparison, in the second quarter of 1999, PC market leader Compaq (NYSE:CPQ) had only 14.6% worldwide market share. Dell was number two with a 10.8% market share. After disassociating itself from AST, Royal Oak has created all of the necessary strategic relationships to produce inexpensive, high-quality, low-price PC's. It has also conducted extensive market research and performed several test-marketing campaigns. As a result, it is now ready to launch its own brand called 1-World PC. 1-World PC's will be priced very aggressively. Complete PC-packages will start at around $750, thus being positioned in the hot sub-$800 market segment. The computers will be assembled in Canada. "In order to establish 1-World as a significant player in the PC market, we will now rely on our extensive expertise in creating and marketing major brands. The official launch date will be October 1, and all of our initial marketing activities are aimed at reaching a significant share of year-end and Christmas sales," says Alex Romanov, President and CEO of Autoco.com. "Our marketing approach will be extremely creative, ranging from TV advertising, online promotions and retail channels to establishing very untraditional partnerships. We will share the details of our launch within the next 4-6 weeks," added Romanov. Autoco.com will focus initially on the North American market. Its goal is to reach a 10% market share in Canada within the next 24-36 months, and make 1-World a Top 10 brand in the United States in the same time frame. "Falling PC prices do not worry us. In fact, the lower the prices go, the higher the PC unit sales growth will be. We believe our production, marketing and distribution costs are significantly lower than 99% of our competitors. This gives us incredible pricing flexibility. When you combine this with the fact that our background is in marketing and branding, not technology, we feel that we have a tremendous competitive edge over established technology-based brand name manufactures. Most of those manufacturers have billions of dollars invested in costly design processes and infrastructure, making them unable to shift their focus to the low-priced market as quickly and effectively as small specialists like us," explains Romanov.