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

To: Patrick E.McDaniel who wrote (24314)	12/5/1997 5:12:00 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176388

Patrick, No. CPQ is a powerful company and it has a varied product mix which is sold through various channels so it is more difficult to get a good understanding of all its businesses. I think DELL is beginning to separate itself from CPQ now. The eventual success of the BTO and CTO models is questionable. Also, it is possible that the surge in orders last quarter was in part due to CPQ flushing the invetory pipeline and converting it to channel sales (remember they reduced their price protection significantly. Also, the increase in unit volume was largely due to the low cost PC which they captured 67% marketshare in the retail channel in September.. I think their unit volumes will be lower this quarter and their marketshare due to the intensified competition. Service is a real problem for them and they do not seem to be doing a very good job. HWP and IBM are becomming increasingly aggressive in the corporate market. ( I am sure this is a problem for DELL as well.) Also, they seem to be mainly targeting the consumer market. Remember that they attempted to purchase GTW a while back and GTW wanted the consumer market as well. I think that CPQ will have a lot of trouble with its channels. For one thing the channels are already competing with them In the future under the BTO and CTO models the channel will have even more power to compete with them. The next two qurters should be very interesting for CPQ. Regards, Jim