layman,
Don't know the answer to your question, but I am heavy on cpq stock, have a couole of call options at 55, sold puts at 55 and bought puts for insurance at 45. I have sold no calls on the stock. Think it is a great buy & have money where mouth is, but I could be wrong.
Here is a little something on market position I have not seen posted.
NW
Subj: Compaq Takes Over No. 1 Position in Windows NT-Based...
Date: 97-12-16 10:13:00 EST
Compaq Takes Over No. 1 Position in Windows NT-Based Workstation Market
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 1997--
One Year After Introducing First Product, The Leading
Enterprise Solutions Vendor Claims 28 Percent of NT
Workstations Sold
Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ) announced worldwide today that the company has taken over the No. 1 position world-wide in terms of units shipped and revenue for workstations based on Intel processors and Windows NT. Compaq took over the top spot from Hewlett-Packard less than one year after introducing its first product, the Compaq Professional Workstation 5000, in October 1996. Reports from analyst groups Dataquest and International Data Corporation (IDC) position Compaq as the leading Windows NT-based workstation vendor for 3Q'97 and for 1997 as a whole, respectively.
According to Dataquest reports, Compaq was responsible for a market-leading 28.2 percent of worldwide "IA-NT" workstation shipments in 3Q'97. The company also had market-leading revenue during the quarter with 27.5 percent of revenue earned.(a) "I have always known that Compaq would be a significant player in this market, but rarely have I seen a company move so quickly to a position of leadership," said Peter ffoulkes, principal analyst at Dataquest. "Compaq has made the right investments, and they've priced their products aggressively. More importantly, they did the research to understand this marketplace so they know what to do to sell effectively. They know what customers want and what matters to them."
IDS Research positions Compaq as the leader in the workstation market-place, not just for Q3, but for 1997 in total. According to IDC's annual report on the worldwide 1997 "personal workstation" market, Compaq held a leading 16 percent of the unit market share and 16.6 percent of the revenue market share for 1997.(b) "To see a company enter a marketplace and attain a leadership position so quickly is just amazing," said Tom Copeland, Director of IDC Research. "Of course, Compaq has a history of entering and quickly leading markets. They find out what customers need and provide for those needs in an industry-standard platform -- or innovate where no standards exist. This is exactly what they've done with the Professional Workstation product line."
"We said from the beginning that our goal was nothing less than leadership in this marketplace, and we have obtained that goal in an incredibly short period of time," said John T. Rose, Senior Vice President and Group General Manager, Enterprise Computing Group, Compaq. "The fact that it took us less than a year to be the No. 1 Windows NT-based workstation vendor validates our timing in entering the market as well as the quality and value of our industry-leading Professional Workstation products." Workstation Customers Agree
An international survey conducted by research group Datapro also indicates that Compaq is the preferred brand for workstation customers. The survey, in which 10,000 questionnaires were mailed to information technology professionals in the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, shows that Compaq is projected to be the leading vendor for customers planning to purchase Windows NT-based workstations in the next two years.
According to the survey report, "...Compaq Computer Corp. -- less than a year after launching its Professional Workstations line of NT workstations -- has already made sizeable inroads into the technical workstation marketplace, with 19.3 percent of those surveyed reporting plans to purchase Compaq workstations within two years and 3.7 percent already citing Compaq as their primary workstation vendor. By 1999, Compaq is projected to become the leading NT workstation vendor with 16.1 percent of respondents who plan to purchase only NT workstations citing Compaq as their primary vendor."(c) Customer Focus Makes the Difference
Focus on customers has been key to Compaq's success in the workstation market. In nine months, Compaq rapidly built a product line that offers a variety of options to meet exacting customer requirements in the company's diverse target markets. For most of the year, these markets have included computer-aided design, digital content creation and financial markets, and the company recently expanded its target markets to include computer-aided engineering and electronic design automation.
"Workstation customers want more than just a computer; they want a workstation tailored toward their demanding applications and a vendor that can provide the technical support they're accustomed to," said Bob Fernander, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing, Compaq North America. "Toward that end, we've worked closely with the leading software vendors in our target markets to ensure our workstations are tweaked and tuned for these applications. In addition, we've recruited high-quality partners with experience in selling, configuring, and supporting RISC/UNIX and Windows NT-based workstations. As a result, our customers receive productive and hassle-free solutions that can be integrated into their heterogeneous UNIX/NT environments." Innovative Products Lead the Industry in Performance
Compaq Professional Workstations are built from the ground up to optimize the performance of the entire system. These workstations incorporate an innovative architecture design that includes dual memory controllers and dual-peer PCI buses. This Highly Parallel System Architecture gives Professional Workstations two to four times the memory bandwidth (1.07 GB/sec.) and twice the I/O bandwidth (267 MB/sec.) of competing vendors' Windows NT-based workstations.
"Compaq has spent a wealth of hours and dollars studying application performance to find out where the bottlenecks are in most industry-standard platforms. This research -- as well as joint research with our application vendor partners -- is what led to the creation of our Highly Parallel System Architecture, which increases overall system bandwidth to maximize application performance," said Rose. "This ability to provide unequaled performance on a completely industry-standard platform is what will make Compaq successful in the workstation market for years to come." Company Background
Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 200 company, is a worldwide information technology company. Compaq is the fifth largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of personal computers. With worldwide sales of $20 billion in 1996, Compaq develops and markets hardware, software, solutions and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, networking and communications products, commercial desktop and portable products and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices.
Compaq products are sold and supported in more than 100 countries through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products can be found at compaq.com or by calling 1-800-OK-COMPAQ in North America. Product information and North America reseller locations can be obtained by calling 1-800-345-1518.
Compaq North America is headquartered in Houston, Texas. Its products and services are sold and supported through a network of more than 25,000 commercial and consumer marketing partners across the United States and Canada.
Historical financial results have been restated to reflect the pooling of Tandem.
-0- (a) According to Dataquest's "Advanced Desktops and Workstations Quarterly Statistics--Q3/97"
(b) The 1997 Worldwide Personal Workstation Market, IDC, 1997
(c) According to "Datapro's 1997 Worldwide User Survey on Workstations," October 20, 1997
Compaq, Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
-0- Executive Quotes
December 15, 1997 Customers
"Compaq has always been a leader in Intel processor-based systems, and we were certain that their workstations would follow suit. Because of our excellent history with Compaq desktops in our organization, we wanted to give Compaq an opportunity to fill our workstation needs as well. When we saw that the Professional Workstations' performance was 50 percent higher than any of the other systems we benchmarked and that their price/performance exceeded every other tier-one workstation supplier, the choice was an easy one to make."
Dennis Coons
Manager of IS Support Services
Ingersoll-Rand
"Compaq Professional Workstations combine high performance, the investment protection of standards-based technology and tight integration with the familiar Windows interface -- all at half the cost of the proprietary products we were using before. With the low cost of ownership, graphics and computing power and the flexibility of industry standards provided by Compaq Professional Workstations, we were able to move to a single computing platform and create a true collaborative environment between designers, programmers and engineers."
Eric Heneghan
Vice President
Giant Step
"Qualcomm has been using Compaq Professional Workstations since they were introduced last year. They are allowing us to consolidate two computers -- a RISC/UNIX-based workstation and a PC -- into a single engineering workstation that will run both high-end engineering applications such as CAD, solid designer and finite element analysis as well as normal work flow applications such as office automation, drawing tools and scheduling software."
Kevin Workman
Senior Engineer, Supervisor Research & Devlopment
Qualcomm Inc.
"While the fast parallel architecture and throughput of this system make it an outstanding workstation, they also make it perfect as the primary server for Project Cool's forthcoming DevSearch search engine for Web Developers. This machine kicks butt over the other systems we've tried."
Glenn Davis
Chief Technical Officer
Project Cool, Inc.
"After deciding to standardize on one desktop hardware platform running Windows NT, we chose Compaq as our partner because it could provide the most powerful, cost-effective solution for our business and is clearly best placed to support BZW in implementing a global IT solution."
Bryan Hotston
IT Director
BZW Indirect Channel Partners
"Much like the rest of the computer world, Hollywood is becoming increasingly active on the NT operating system. As a growing player in the Hollywood entertainment space, 3 Point Digital was attracted to Compaq Computer because Compaq has one of the most solid Windows NT core competencies that exists. The ability for 3 Point Digital to partner with a Fortune 100 company will allow both companies to learn from each other and help establish Windows NT deeper into the entertainment space."
Michael Cavanagh
President
3 Point Digital
"Compaq has shown that it understands the needs of workstation users by providing systems designed from the ground up to deliver true workstation performance on an industry-standard platform. And, they've shown they understand the needs of the channel by developing a business strategy that leverages the value of technically oriented resellers and distributors while enabling us to capitalize on the economics of their own broad-based business model through compelling margin enhancement programs."
Peter Coleman
Vice President of Sales
Pioneer-Standard Electronics Inc
CONTACT:
Compaq Computer Corporation
Gary Frazier, 281-514-0484
gary.frazier@compaq.com
OR
Miller/Shandwick Technologies
Sue Vaillancourt, 617-536-0470
svaillancourt@miller.shandwick.com |
