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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1997 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (7933)	12/6/1997 7:22:00 PM
From: Dan Ross	Respond to of 9285

The only time that the margins will be comparable will be when the upgrade cycle slows down dramatically....I've had my T.V. for 10 years...picture is still great!!! Computers need to be upgraded or they become obsolete... You're completely, 100%, correct in saying that margins will decline....they have to...law of supply and demand....The demand will slow in the U.S. as penetration levels get higher.....However, overseas growth is phenomenal....Compaq had 76% higher sales in Brazil this Q vs. last Q....HOW IS THAT FOR GROWTH???.... On another note, we haven't seen much in terms of competition from overseas...This is when margins really come down...How can a computer company differentiate themselves, whether it be locally or overseas....The only thing I can think of is knowing what the consumer is willing to pay for at the right time.....Ie. service(big right now), looks(big a year ago with the Sony, Toshiba, 1 local company...), multimedia(big a year ago..I don't know about now)....communications package(56K, 28.8, ISDN, ADSL, etc)..... Most Japanese companies have gotten their rears kicked in the U.S. market.....Compaq is something like #2 in Japan..... One last thing.....ADSL, from what I hear, won't be the 4-8 MB/s that everyone wants...Apparently the telcos will be offering something like 768-1.5 Mb/s Christmas next year....This is a HUGE increase for most end users...still not fast enough for junkies like me downloading 5MB MP3 files......(MP3 is the format for encoding sounds digitally into a file)....really compact encoding and decoding....Music companies can send you music over the net if they had enough bandwidth....You can find these files on the net....MP3 files are CD quality...probably illegal too.....Sound great on my home stereo (connected to my computer of course!!!!) Dan Ross