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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Duker who wrote (33013)	11/1/1999 8:26:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

Winter PC Models Push Average Price Up in First Week of October November 1, 1999 (TOKYO) -- There's still a lot of time until the year-end PC sales battle, but PC sales in Japan already were brisk in the first week of October both in terms of units and value compared to the previous week Although growth rates are small, the reason for the brisk sales is that various PC manufacturers launched new models for the fall and winter seasons slightly earlier than usual. The activity led to a rise of 2,386 yen in the average PC sales price compared to the previous week. (104.17 yen = US$1) According to aggregate figures calculated by GfK Japan Ltd., an information service company handling POS data of 55 mass marketing outlets of household electric appliances, the sales figure for PCs at approximately 2,000 such shops during the first week of October 1999 (Oct. 4-10) showed an increase of 2.4 percent in units and 3.6 percent in value over the previous week, and an increase of 71.0 percent in units and 55.6 percent in value compared to the same week the previous year (Oct. 5-11, 1998). The average sales price of 201,160 yen the previous week rose by 2,386 yen to 203,546 yen. PCs with Windows 98 Second Edition appeared in the market, and are expected to be the main focus of the fall and winter models. They support IEEE1394, and come equipped with an IEEE1394 port and optical digital output port. With many PC models targeted at young people and women, observers say the coming fall and winter sales battle will be intense. Ordinarily, the winter sales battle begins in the first week of November, but the sales figures of the first week of October compared to those of the same week of 1998 rose by 4.8 percentage points in units and 8.0 percentage points in value. Those figures are expected to rise in the following week. GfK Japan collects POS data from 55 IT-related retail sales companies centering on high-volume stores specializing in home electric appliances. It covers about 3,200 stores (as of April 1998) throughout Japan. In cooperation with GfK Japan, Nikkei Market Access provides weekly reports of PC sales in units and value. The sales data has been based on the same 41 companies (with about 2,000 stores) since April 1996. The number of PCs sold at the 2,000 stores is estimated to comprise about 10 percent of gross domestic shipments. When limiting the sales to retail sales channel, the share comes to about 25 percent of such shipments.