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.

Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elwood P. Dowd who wrote (89387)	1/31/2001 10:22:30 AM
From: Elwood P. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Capellas interview(3) by: skeptically 01/31/01 09:06 am EST Msg: 215556 of 215572 Do you plan to compete in the set-top box (digital television decoder) market? There is going to be a gateway into the home and there will be a wireless home network that will have computers. We are in the wireless LAN (local area network) business and we are in the wireless home business. We will be in the business of connecting the wireless device out to an extranet and we are in the business of building firewalls to protect your home for security reasons. So maybe we are in that business, but maybe a set-top box is not our definition of what the market is. Do you see the recent slowdown in the PC market as a catalyst for further consolidation in the industry? It depends what business you are in. IBM, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard have substantial computational platforms, which they extend into the Internet access business. I think that just making PCs is going to be a very tough play. But there won't be a slowdown in the number of people who want to access the Internet, there won't be a slowdown in the volume of content, there won't be a slowdown in the richness of content. How optimistic are you about consumer demand for technology over the next year or so? I think there is no question that the enterprise and the infrastructure rollout is where the growth is in the first half of the year. On the consumer side the fundamentals that led to the decline was simply a lack of confidence because it went too fast to be anything else. There are three things that are really going to make a jump on the consumer side. The first one is music and video stream to the home. For that to happen we need broadband to be rolled out and broadband is being rolled out, perhaps not as fast as we hoped. The second thing we need is content providers that can do the distribution and that is already filled with Disney, AOL etc. The third thing is you need to be able to present the technology with very high-performance, which means stereo speakers and high-resolution graphics processors. The delivery of the next generation of content, rich graphics, interactive screens, interactive gaming, music, video, peer-to-peer, interactive video conferencing - that is what is going to drive the next big kick and that will happen. In Europe, especially, it seems that consumers aren't really aware of these possibilities. I think Europe is taking a breather while it figures out what form of Internet access it wants. Will it be cellular phones, will it be the PC or the handheld? I do think that there is a little more pause for thought than there was in the United States. (END) DOW JONES NEWS 01 -31 -01 12:30 AM