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

To: John Rieman who wrote (25488)	11/19/1997 5:43:00 PM
From: JPM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

To anyone... with C-CUBE's new codec... is it possible to hook that up to a direct tv signal and record movies in digital format? I know its not inexpensive, but is that what you can do with the codec? thanks, Jp

To: John Rieman who wrote (25488)	11/19/1997 5:51:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Not exactly Cube but... China's Personal-Computer Industry Is Starting to Beat Out U.S. Companies ÿ By Wayne Arnold The Wall Street Journal 11/19/97 Preferential policies and a home-field advantage are helping China's rapidly emerging personal-computer industry beat out big-name U.S. companies in one of Asia's last high-growth markets. Companies such as Legend Group, Tontru Group, Great Wall, Founder Electronics Group and Langchao are fast emerging to take their place among such household computing names as International Business Machines Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. in China's market for PCs. Overall PC sales in China rose 21% to $1.06 billion in the third quarter from the year before, according to preliminary estimates from market research firm IDC Asia/Pacific Ltd. But revenues to foreign PC companies fell 2% as unit sales rose just 4%. "They're just struggling to maintain their market share," said IDC analyst Kitty Fok. This represents a setback for big U.S. PC manufacturers. China already was assuming increasing importance to the industry's future: Last year, its PC market overtook South Korea's as the second-largest in Asia. It is larger than all of the markets in Southeast Asia combined. And unlike the other big Asian markets -- Japan, South Korea and Taiwan -- it wasn't dominated by home-grown brands. That may be changing. "Ten years ago, being foreign was a ticket to success in China," said Philip Leung, general manager in Hong Kong for Compaq, which once led China's PC market. "It's unrealistic for foreign brands to aspire to be No. 1 in the future." Small Chinese makers have long been a thorn in the side of the big U.S. brands. Last year, IDC estimated that half of the PCs sold in China were clones. The largest single company's market share was IBM's, with 6.9%. The clones owed part of their success to Intel Corp., whose "Intel Inside" marketing campaign for its Pentium microprocessors lent a patina of quality to unknown PC makers that use its chips. IDC estimated that if Intel Inside were a brand, it would have had a 45% share of China's market last year. Intel's push into China, along with increased investment by Taiwan electronics companies, gave clone-PC makers access to components at least as good as those used by most U.S. companies, said IDC China analyst Karim Davezac. China's government helped marshall these ramshackle screwdriver shops into a burgeoning domestic industry. Last year, it issued a directive that any PC maker matching a list of four "No's" was unauthorized: No production license, no production standard, no methods for testing, and no Chinese-language instruction manual were the hallmarks of a PC maker China didn't want. More recently, China has announced that it will help the top five local brands -- Legend, Tontru, Great Wall, Founder and Langchao -- take over the 150-odd small PC makers to soak up excess competition. The result: a fast-growing domestic PC industry that offers customers the latest in PC technology and service warranties. Even small companies in Beijing, said Mr. Davezac, now offer some kind of service package. Larger companies such as Legend have a nationwide service network. But the biggest advantage the locals have over the imports is price. The average Chinese-brand PC costs less than two-thirds that of the average foreign PC, according to Ms. Fok. That has hurt the foreign companies among small businesses and consumers, now the largest and fastest-growing segment of China's market. In the third quarter, foreign manufacturers saw their share of this market drop by a third to roughly 23%. In this battle for market share, some local manufacturers have good teachers. Legend, for example, distributes PCs for Hewlett-Packard and AST Research Inc. Great Wall has a joint manufacturing venture in Shenzhen with IBM. Founder distributes for Digital Equipment Corp. and local brand Seastar is one of Compaq's biggest distributors, Ms. Fok said. IBM executives say the government has also adopted a "Buy China" policy, an observation apparently borne out by IDC's findings. Local PC makers saw sales to the government jump 112% in unit terms in the third quarter, according to IDC estimates. Sales of foreign PCs were largely flat. As a result, the foreign share of sales to China's large corporations, government and education sectors fell to 40% from 51% last year, Ms. Fok said.