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

To: Gabriel008 who wrote (23755)	12/1/1997 10:35:00 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Gabriel, I'm glad to see you are still around. I think Hank and candlestick and the wandering CPQ bull steve have disheartened quite a few with their endless postings of technobabble and chest thumping proclamations of expertise. It reminds me of Los Angeles TV on a Sunday morning. Anyway, I have been having discussions with associate regarding the progress of the BTO implementations. It looks like the smarter retailers are going into competition with CPQ, HWP and BELL. CPU has its own no name brand of PCs that it is selling. Fry's electronics is doing the same. CPQ and HWP low cost PC's are made by third parties so the retailers might as well cut out the vendors before they get cut out by them. Meantime, CPQ and the others are cutting their price protection as much as possible so overstocking will have to be eaten by the retail channel. I suspect that CPQ and the others are trying to stuff the channels since they have cut the price protection. This should come home to roost after the Christmas quarter. Survival of the fittest. CPQ has lost its advantage in the low cost PC with its marketshare slipping from 67 to 42% in one month under the pressure of BELL and HWP's new pavillion product line. CPQ also lost share in the $1000-1500 market segment of the desktop consumer market. I would expect this trend to continue since there is very little in a brand name now a days. There have been some reports that the BTO is going to take another year to get into place among those retailers who survive. I suspect that DELL's sales last quarter would have been higher but for the large number of product transitions they were making in every product line. The CFO mentioned that they should have passed the component cost improvements to the customer faster. I believe this is their best strategy, i.e., maximize sales and inventory turns instead of optimizing on profit margins. Regards, Jim Kelley