Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Paul Engel who wrote (75021)	10/11/1999 7:32:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 1574043

Paul, It is true that screwdriver shops buy memory at spot and are disadvantaged by it. I made that comment last week. As a tradeoff they have all other items(except mobos, which are short everywhere) in abundant supply. In a way the screwdriver shops are the Dell model perfected and the collected volume of the screwdriver shops is far larger than any name brand player, even larger than Dell. They are a wild scramble of unconnected players all maikignfrom standard mobos and standard cases etc. In shortage times of CPUs and memory they suffer, but they have enjoyed cheaper spot ram for the last 2-3 years. They have other disadvantages, they must buy Win98 from distribution of other OEMs. No low cost preloads for them. My group of stores once took part in a survey to show what sales were for all the components as well as name brand systems. I showed a copy of the finalised survey(they sent accountants to over 1000 Canadian retailers for 6 months logging all parts and name brand systems sold.) to a Chinese friend of mine who was the largest panasonic rep in Canada(4 distribution warehouses across Canada). It showed IBM, Compaq, AST etc and showed the total sales of all systems. He laughed and told me he sold more 3.5" floppy drives in each month that the total of system sales in my survey. I went to the survey company and they were amazed and they finally realised that he was correct. They had approached me because I was one of the pioneers and had the largest group of stores in the area. They did more work and found they were under-reporting systems in Canada by over 50% due to the enormous collective sales of the screwdriver shops. That is why I say that the collective screwdriver shop sales are larger than Dell or IBM or Compaq. When prices get tight, they stall memory buying and these soon makes a glut again as their client base is very cost sensitive and if memory doubles they buy half as much and ship leaner systems. IBM etc clients buy at whatever the price is. Now I suspect Dell has had to go spot on memory? Can anyone confirm that? Bill Bill