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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Green who wrote (33850)	11/4/1999 12:31:00 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 93625

Shares of Rambus (NASDAQ:RMBS - news) were up another $4.38, or 5.2%, to $88.88 this morning on yesterday's news that Intel (NASDAQ:INTC - news) will unveil its delayed 820 chipset in the next two weeks. This will help memory chip producers that use Rambus technology. Rambus, a chip designer, receives fees from memory chipmakers that sell products that use its technology. The delays of the 820 chipset release and other new processors and chipsets have hurt shares of Intel and Rambus in recent weeks. But yesterday shares of Intel rose $2.25 to $79.75 yesterday, while Rambus gained $18 to $84.50. Intel was up $0.81 to $80.56 in morning trading. fnews.yahoo.com

To: Don Green who wrote (33850)	11/4/1999 12:36:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

O.T. For those who think, this kind of thing, could never happen to them...(Think Again).. Of course this is much different??? but consider the amount of money and time invested!!! hmmmm? NEC finally pulls plug on Packard Bell By David Einstein NEW YORK. 3:55 PM EST-Japanese electronics giant NEC (nasdaq: NIPNY) decided it was better to lose face than to lose money. After pouring more than $2 billion into Packard Bell NEC, only to have it continue to bleed red ink like a stuffed pig, NEC announced it will shutter the subsidiary's U.S. operations. The announcement brings to a close a riches-to-rags saga for Packard Bell, once the best-selling personal computer brand in the retail market. Packard Bell pioneered the concept of selling PCs in big office stores and warehouse stores. In 1996 it had 15% of the U.S. retail market and $8 billion in annual revenue. But since then the company has gone downhill, despite heavy investments by NEC, which owns 88% of it, and France's Groupe Bull, which owns the rest. In 1997 and 1998, Packard Bell NEC lost more than $1 billion, and it was on course to lose $150 million in 1999. Saddled with huge losses in other areas of its business as well, NEC had no choice but to lower the boom. NEC says it will close Packard Bell NEC's assembly plant in Sacramento, Calif., lay off 80% of the 2,600 employees there and stop selling Packard Bell computers in the U.S. Sales will continue in Europe, where the brand is still popular. Also, Alain Couder, the former Bull executive who has run Packard Bell NEC since 1998, will resign at the end of the year. NEC will move its U.S. headquarters from Sacramento to Mountain View, Calif., where it has a sales and marketing office. Packard Bell NEC's downfall was the result of a mélange of problems, some of which were the company's own fault: • In the mid-'90s, the founders tried to build a mass-market business by selling lots of low-priced PCs. But to keep costs down, they had to use cheap parts and cheap labor, and the result was cheap systems. "They had a lot of returns and recalls, and as people got bad experiences, Packard Bell got a bad reputation for providing shoddy goods," says analyst Rob Enderle at Giga Information Group. • Privately held Packard Bell never developed the channel relationships and manufacturing logistics necessary to compete against the big dogs like Compaq Computer (nyse: CPQ) and Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HWP), and when they entered the market in force, Packard Bell found itself losing shelf space. • When the Internet came along, the company--by then renamed Packard Bell NEC--failed to take advantage of the online opportunity. It tried to create a direct sales model for some NEC computers, but, like Compaq, it couldn't find a way to sell directly while still keeping distributors happy. • Its leverage as the low-price leader evaporated last year when eMachines entered the market. Packard Bell NEC wasn't making money on $1,000 PCs and had no way to compete against eMachines, which sold them for less than $500. NEC now must try to shore up its image--and its business--in the U.S., where it sells corporate PCs, servers and monitors under its own brand name. "Packard Bell hasn't destroyed the NEC brand," Enderle says. "But they have to rebuild the company around that brand. It's recoverable, but it's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be cheap." The biggest loser in Packard Bell NEC's demise may be the city of Sacramento, which had lured the company away from Southern California in 1995, after its headquarters was destroyed in the Northridge earthquake. The city loaned Packard Bell founder Beny Alagem $26 million to refit an old 1.8-million-square-foot Army depot. And on top of that, Alagem won some $2.5 million in annual tax breaks from the state. At one point, the assembly plant employed more than 5,000 workers, many of whom were drawn from Sacramento's welfare rolls. The city touted the plant as a prime example of business and government cooperation in its effort to attract other high tech companies. Now all Sacramento has is an empty factory, a lot of unemployed people and a very bad taste in its mouth. forbes.com