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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (34454)	2/29/2000 5:36:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Second Week of Spring PC Sales Campaign Remains Steady February 28, 2000 (TOKYO) -- Sales of personal computers at retail shops during the spring sales campaign in Japan in the first week of February reached almost the same level as the peak of the winter sales season. As the spring campaign has just begun, the peak is expected to come a bit later. Yet, PC sales for individual users are already growing rapidly. According to a survey conducted by GfK Japan Ltd., an information service company handling POS data from 55 mass retailers of home electronic appliances, PC sales in the first week of February 2000 (Jan. 31-Feb. 6) at some 2,000 mass retailers rose by 11.6 percent in units and by 14.3 percent in value over the previous week. In comparison with the same week last year (Feb. 1-7, 1999), sales in terms of units rose 97.4 percent and sales value by 76.5 percent. The average retail price rose by 4,721 yen to 202,636 yen from 197,915 yen the previous week. (111.24 yen = US$1) The excellent start of the spring sales campaign is partly due to a release of spring models by Sony Corp. on Feb. 5. It added the "J series" to low-priced desktop PCs in addition to the space-saving desktop "L series," and introduced many new types of notebook PCs, which contributed to an increase of PC sales that week. As the other companies also released spring models gradually, PC sales in units that week, as well as last week, remained at two-times the level of those in the same week the previous year. With such a steady increase, the turnover has already gained a similar volume of sales as that seen in the second week of December 1999. In every year, the second week of December is the period right after the winter bonus is paid and the winter campaign peaks. In the last years' spring sales campaign, it was the fourth week of March during which sales reached this level. Also, it was the first time that the average retail price rebounded to the 200,000 yen level for these six weeks. GfK Japan collects POS data from 42 IT-related store chains centering on high-volume stores specializing in home electric appliances. It covers about 3,200 stores (as of October 1999) throughout Japan. In cooperation with GfK Japan, Nikkei Market Access provides weekly reports of PC sales in volume and value. The sales data has been based on the same 32 store chains (with about 2,000 outles) since April 1996. The number of PCs sold at the 2,000 outlets is estimated to comprise about 10 percent of gross domestic shipments, and to form 25 percent share in the retail sales channel's market. Note: Nikkei Market Access changed the way of counting the numbers for the week. Up till the previous report, the number of the week was set according to Monday, i.e., if a week starts from the fifth Monday of the month, the week is counted as the fifth week. Instead, from this report, the week including the first day of that month is to be counted as the first week of that month. Therefore, the surveyed week in this report (Jan. 31-Feb. 6), which includes the first day of February, is called the first week of February, while it would be counted as the fifth week of January in the old system.