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Technology Stocks : Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Duke of URL© who wrote (3540)	8/20/2004 11:09:49 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4345

Duke - About a year before the merger with HP I attended a talk that Blackmore gave to a meeting of major channel partners. It was one of the most insightful descriptions of the economics of channel distribution I have seen. In it, Blackmore described why some operations are not economical for Compaq - at certain levels, the touch required or the size of the deals or a host of other factors make the business unattractive for Compaq but because of local dynamics, channel partners can do fine in those areas. Blackmore's point was that not only are those natural fits for channel relationships, but driven by fundamentals and therefore not a matter of executive decision but of practical reality. Blackmore pointed out that Microsoft had a virtually identical understanding of those dynamics. He then went into the hard issues, which were all 'intersection point' issues - not questions about fundamental value, but questions about how to handle the overlap situations where the business case was on the edge of acceptable to Compaq. Those areas were where all of the conflict was generated even though they represented a small part of the overall business. Capellas seemed to have little feel for any of that, but my suspicion is that Capellas was saying and doing whatever would give the appearance of motion.