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To: John Rieman who wrote (25700)	11/25/1997 10:35:00 PM
From: Helios	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Toshiba is getting out of desktop models. DVD is partly to blame. biz.yahoo.com Company Press Release Toshiba Bids Farewell to Retail Desktop-PC Market, Reports CMP's Computer Retail Week MANHASSET, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 25, 1997--Toshiba America yesterday disclosed to CMP's Computer Retail Week that it will discontinue marketing the year-old Infinia consumer-desktop brand when it sells out remaining inventory. An executive cited a ''dramatically changed'' market, especially with the predominance of sub-$1,000 PCs, in explaining the move. Market analysts said several critical miscalculations and a disturbing drop in market share for Toshiba's core notebook-computer products made Infinia's demise inevitable. The company intends to remain in the desktop market, but only on the commercial enterprise side. ''We found that basically the market has changed dramatically over the last year,'' Ron Crocco, the former Compaq retail executive recently named Toshiba's Vice President of Sales, told the publication. ''Sales of sub-$1,000 PC sales grew by leaps and bounds and caused us to look at what we are going to do in this space.'' Toshiba's sleek, feature-packed Infinias nested at the top end of the market, which has been battered by sub-$1,000 systems. But the popularity of low-cost systems was only part of the problem, the newspaper reported today in its online edition (http://www.crw.com). A pair of early, high-tech bets failed and hurt the company at a critical point in its growth. The first was a decision to follow Intel's (NASDAQ:INTC - news) 1996 road map that moved the introduction of MMX from October 1996 to January '97, causing consumers to delay their purchases last year. That left Toshiba with inventory it could not sell, sources reported at the time. The company was forced to make major price concessions after the launch of its non-Pentium MMX products. Price-protection costs were said to have led Toshiba to reconsider its position in the market as early as last spring. Another misstep was the large bet Toshiba placed on DVD, a technology that it codeveloped and saw as a differentiating technology for its home systems. But continual delays, lack of software, contractual issues and confusion in that market have made DVD the non-event of the year in PC technology, and the first half of 1998 does not look much better. While juggling the impact of those issues, Toshiba missed the ball on others: It wound up late to market this past spring with MMX technology and was slow in introducing others. Oddly, Toshiba was unable to leverage its strength in the notebook-computer market to help its consumer desktop sales. ''Their products were good, but they were only at the high end,'' said one retail store manager. ''They did not have anything in the mid to low portion of the market.'' The company decided that if it was going to invest in developing differentiated systems, it made more sense to focus on the commercial side with its Equium line rather than in its Infinia products. ''Where the price points are today, the opportunity is to sell in the enterprise,'' Crocco told the publication. ''All efforts in retail will be in notebooks.'' The company will continue selling the remaining Infinias until the end of the year and into early 1998, and then will cease selling desktop systems at retail, Crocco said. The company does offer its Equium line through the outbound sales force of the office superstores such as CompUSA but has not decided if it will allow them to sell on the store floor, Crocco said. CMP's Computer Retail Week is one of the leading newspapers for technology retailers. Each week, it provides critical information about new alliances, technologies and products for a wide audience of computer hardware and software retailers, mass merchants, software specialty stores and other Channel members. For the past seven years, Computer Retail Week has delivered breaking news weekly, and those stories are posted on the Computer Retail Week home page at crw.com. CMP Media Inc. (Nasdaq: CMPX - news) is a leading print and online publisher of newspapers and magazines about technology and an innovator in technology-related Internet products and services. CMP's offerings serve the broad technology spectrum in key high-tech markets worldwide: those who build technology, those who sell it, and those who use it. The company's publication titles, which include EE Times, InformationWeek, Computer Reseller News, Computer Retail Week and Windows Magazine, along with products and services created exclusively for the Internet, can be found on CMPnet at cmpnet.com. NOTE: All of CMP's press releases are available on the Web at cmp.com.

To: John Rieman who wrote (25700)	11/25/1997 10:55:00 PM
From: Stoctrash	Respond to of 50808

RE: DVD-ram format war The war is a negative. Its all about $$$$$$!! On the bright side, I've gathered a few opinions here and there over the past few months and here's what i've found. The "war" has actually accelerated the rollout of DVD-ram. Those who have it, want to be first to market, hopefully to make their standard the default winner. In previous hardware conflicts, I believe it keep mfg's from taking the stand and pushing forward. The difference today is that knowone debates the fact that DVD-RAM is the ultimate in versitile storage. This is not the Davork (sp) keyboard or the Sony Mini Disk. So how or why does this help C-"dog"? The DVx is here, done,...finno. The large CE companies cannot afford to spend the time (money is no object) to produce such a device in time for the "war". Simple ehhh....? Let the war begin....it will be a long one, especially if Hollywood plays tricks like they did with the vanilla DVD. IMO...Fred.