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To: AMF who wrote (40017)	11/11/1997 3:30:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

AMF - Re: Samsung and The Alpha Chip Last year, DEC was reported to have sold 275,000 ALPHA chips - which I believe implies systems, as well. Samsung will be shipping ".. box-ready motherboards by February of next year." They will be counting on developing a market for PCs/server manufacturers based on these motherboards. The OEM's that potentially may buy these boards have to integrate the remaining hardware AND and operating system. Thus, they must enter into a licensing agreement with either DEC of Microsoft for purchase and distribution of software based on these boards. The time to do this - hardware integration/software licensing/software and hardware integration - may not be trivial - many months at least. So, companies/individuals who opt for this will have to put up money and time anad then marketing effort before they can begin to realize some sales of these machines. And selling a machine with an O/S is one thing, but providing application software is still another obstacle. Let's address the application software issue. DEC claims there are several thousand native Alpha applications. I would assume most of these have to be purchased from the software developers themselves, or VAR's, since they are most likely not available in retail stores. In summary, there are immense obstacles - time, money, hardware, software - that need to be addressed by any potential Samsung/Alpha OEM. In light of the 275,000 Alphas systems shipped last year, the total available market (TAM) must be considered to project future potential profits. Can a samll OEM make money with this business model? Then, consider DEC's future commitment to Alpha, vis-a-vis the recent Intel/DEC agreement regarding Aplah production and future support for MERCED. Some people will buy these systems - those that use Alpha Servers and may already have purchased software to run on these machines. This may be a decent market for one or two comapnies to serve, but I wouldn't expect Samsung to boot strap an entireley new market of Alpha PCs based on the motherbaord business model suggested in that article. Paul