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

To: Dave Jacob who wrote (5667)	10/24/1997 10:04:00 PM
From: Stephen Leung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213173

Short term Sales I think Apple in the short term should sell more boxes. I do agree that the firesale of Power Computing computers will crimp demand. However, with no competition, Apple should sell more computers at Christmas barring a market meltdown and East Crisis. Their prices are becoming more attractive. The only long term negative is that there will be fewer and fewer Mac Computers. Apple's narrow minded vision of the future is them dominating their own market. Apple has failed to learn from its historic mistakes and thus is doomed to share a dwindling market with whatever clone maker is left (maybe 1 or 2 large cloners). Obviously a big negative because this drives software development down and scares away both consumers and corporate users. What I see: Apple will become more of a software company like Microsoft, pumping out programs and System software to the Wintel machines. Their Rhapsody should take hold and help preserve whatever remnants of Mac OS is left.

To: Dave Jacob who wrote (5667)	10/25/1997 12:17:00 AM
From: Marc Newman	Respond to of 213173

<<Have you seen the clearance sale ads from Power Computing in the recent issues of MacWeek? How much do you think this will erode your 50,000-box estimate?>> I have, it won't. My 50,000 box estimate is very conservative. The clone market is offically 10% of Mac sales. Many reports put it at 20%. Apple sold 650,000 boxes last quarter despite a terrible computer market in Japan and firesales from Power, Motorola, and all the tiny going-out-of business cloners. I see Power's current ad campaign as their last gasp. Why? A few reasons. The big one is Power's customer base. They sell to the in-the-know power users. Customers who know what they want and then shop around for the best price. (Power also sold to the people who could barely afford a new computer but their inventory of PowerBases has dried up.) The problem is that these customers know that the G3 machines are coming out in November. Power is trying to entice them to buy one last 604e system at a great price but I don't see it being more than moderately successful. These machines are limited compared to what's coming out from Apple. Two more reasons: Inventory and Security. Power can't get stuck with any excess machines by the end of Dec. Their license ends then. Plus, Power's margin is only about 5%. They have no pricing room to blow out excess inventory. I would be surprised to see Power running ads more than halfway into the quarter. And then there's customer security. One of the reasons people have been deserting the Mac is fear that Apple will go out of business. Would you want to buy from a co. that's definitely going out of the business? Anyway, I hope this has helped somebody. Apple is such a big company it is hard to tell how their sales will go. But we can get an edge by looking at what we do know. Marc