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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (10731)	3/5/2002 3:33:35 PM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

14:43 ET TRDO Intrado: JP Morgan reits Buy rating, names co top software pick (14.15 +0.05) JP Morgan reiterates their Buy rating and calls TRDO their top pick in software; firm believes that the 40% decline in the stock since the start of 2001 presents a compelling buying opportunity as the concerns over TRDO's diversified base of telecom customers are overdone, and there should be plenty of catalysts in the coming year.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (10731)	3/6/2002 1:20:25 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 57684

Dell Computer Corp. reached another milestone Tuesday, becoming the leading seller of home computers in the United States. Mar 06, 2002 (Austin AmericanStatesman Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX) It's just the latest conquest for Dell, which early last year became the world's leading seller of computers to businesses and consumers combined. Dell shipped nearly 1 million computers to U.S. consumers in the fourth quarter of 2001, up from just 380,000 units the year before, research firm IDC said Tuesday. Its market share increased to 20.13 percent, nudging out HewlettPackard, which had 20.05 percent. The results signal a stunning turnaround in the consumer PC business. Two years ago, Dell was a distant No. 5. Dell is No. 3 in worldwide consumer PC shipments, but it has dramatically narrowed the gap. HewlettPackard Co. leads with 10.6 percent, trailed by Compaq Computer Corp. at 9.1 percent and Dell at 8.9 percent. A year ago, Dell had just 3.9 percent of worldwide market share. Much of Dell's recent increase in sales may have come from rival Gateway Inc., whose U.S. market share slipped by nearly half from 14 percent to 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001 as the company fell behind in an industrywide price war. Houston-based Compaq Computer Corp. also has seen a dramatic drop in market share in the past year, slipping from 19 percent to 14 percent in the fourth quarter. "Dell is certainly executing better, more consistently and on a greater scale than everybody else," IDC analyst Roger Kay said. "Gateway is having very specific Gateway problems. I think that HP got a pretty good piece of fourth quarter consumer growth. Compaq seems to have stumbled a bit as well." Until recently, Dell had only a little consumer business, primarily from tech savvy buyers who wanted high performance equipment. The company had long avoided selling to first time users because of the cost involved in support after a sale. Dell began targeting consumers aggressively in 1997 as more and more consumers were buying their second or third generation computers. The company intensified its consumer efforts in 2000 as overall PC demand began to slow and it needed to find new growth. Dell stepped up advertising and marketing efforts, which really took off in 2001 behind a popular television campaign featuring a likable character named "Steven" and the memorable line: "Dude, you're getting a Dell." It also began selling in nontraditional venues, such as the home shopping cable TV network QVC. Dell also experimented with kiosks in malls during Christmas. "We're still committed to the direct (sales) model," said John Hamlin, who heads Dell's consumer business. "We're expanding our reach, which we've broadened from tech users and tech publication readers. "There's pretty strong evidence we're not just winning from people in the direct space who already are comfortable buying on the phone or online, but from people who are traditional retail customers." Mostly, Dell did what it does best: use its low-inventory, build-to-order strategy to outprice competitors. "We're clearly the most profitable and lowest cost player in the industry," Hamlin said. "Unlike a lot of our competitive set, we haven't changed strategy every quarter." It's more than price, Kay said. "They're capitalizing on a better educated public, which basically knows how to get to Dell and buy a PC. They get a huge response to their catalogs." Dell is the only PC maker that made money selling to consumers last year, and that's not likely to change. But profits are razor thin. Even though Dell estimates its consumer shipments rose 38 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago, revenue from consumer PCs increased just 18 percent. "The challenge with consumer is always same: You have to support these people, and there's a cost to that," Kay said. "The challenge is keeping this business and having it be profitable. Making money in consumer is always difficult." (c) 2002, Austin AmericanStatesman, Texas. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.