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

To: kemble s. matter who wrote (160589)	9/11/2000 3:54:11 PM
From: kaka	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176388

MONACO, September 11 (Reuters) - Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell Computer , the world's second largest PC maker, said on Monday he believed there would be a market recovery after a slow first half, but stopped short of repeating sales growth goals for his firm of 30 percent for the full year. Market growth would likely recover to the industry's long term average of 15 percent, he said. "Probably 15 percent is a good guess," he told Reuters Television at a conference here, adding that history had shown that Dell had been growing significantly faster than the overall market. "We expect that to continue," he said. The computer maker in August published second quarter revenue growth of 25 percent, lower than average because of slowing demand in the wake of the millennium change, but it added the market recovery in the second half of the year would help the company achieve its goal of 30 percent growth. This would mean Dell would have to grow in excess of 30 percent in the last six months of the year. Analysts at Chase H&Q are not as upbeat and expect a less robust second half. Others agreed, with Donaldson, Lukfin & Jenrette analyst Kevin McCarthy saying Dell's revenues were still highly dependent on desk top unit shipments in the U.S. and the move to Internet computing was slowing down the commercial desk top business as users could use the Web without using the latest computer model. But Michael Dell stressed that the advent of high speed Internet access via cables and Digital Subscriber Line-telephone wires would change this. "A lot of people speculate that with high-end connections people no longer need a PC. But in fact you want a faster PC to benefit from the high speeds. Sixty percent of those who get a high speed line buy a faster PC within a year," he said. The computer manufacturer who changed the PC industry by selling directly to consumers and businesses, said he firmly believed that the PC would remain the main gateway to the Internet and this would not be changed by television set-top computers, home gateway computers or mobile computers. "We're not planning to get into the set-top box business. Set-top boxes may pose a potential threat (to our business), but today they're more future forecasts than reality," Dell also told Reuters. Along the same lines he argued that the best way to access the mobile Internet was through a "three-pound notebook (a portable PC)", instead of a small handheld device. Meanwhile Dell would remain focused on attacking the high end of the PC market, he said. Dell has just begun offering storage computers, called Power Vault, at what it claimed was one-tenth to one-twentieth of the price of its competitors. "They don't have all the features of our competitor's products," Dell said. "But they run the main software programmes and we'll increase features as we grow." Storage computers are regarded as one of the hottest areas in computing, as Internet traffic doubles every 100 days, with Dell expecting sales to grow by 70 percent to reach over $1 billion this fiscal year.