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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E_K_S who wrote (6706)	1/13/1998 1:04:00 PM
From: Alok Sinha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

I saw the interview too. Seems like Zander had a bad cold. I thought that he came across as technically pretty suave, but not marketing wise. Certainly did not leverage the cost efficiency from Asian manufacturing. At one point in response to a question with respect to gaining market share and margin pressures from from Dell / CPQ in the low end workstattion market, he responded with "let the numbers speak for themselves,.." but quickly moved to something else. When asked if this was going back on McNealy's criticism of the "profitless prosperity" of the PC makers he emphasized that this product had good margins built into it. He said the all in margin on low end NT machines (including INTC's and MSFTs) are high. Since they are supplying the chip, O/S and using cheaper PC parts and building in Asia, the cost would be low. They are going for the high -end graphics and video users (SGI and Apple) - in fact they are also introducing a trade-in program of Compaq, Apple and SGI machines (PAQ back, MAC back ) for the Sun machines. It was not clear what applications would be running on these machines (I know MS Office will). Probably the demo will calrify that. Although nothing with respect to earnings was discussed, I think we will be OK. Regards Alok Did however sell my Jan 42.5 calls at 1.25 this morning - maybe too early, but the premium is drying up fast. If the rally continues, may buy some 42.5 puts for Jan to ride out the short term volatility.

To: E_K_S who wrote (6706)	1/13/1998 1:05:00 PM
From: Fred Ayres	Respond to of 64865

NEWS!! JAPAN RAIDS MICROSOFT January 13, 1998 8:01 AM PST Reuters TOKYO - Japan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday raided Microsoft Corp.'s Japanese unit over suspected infringement of antitrust laws, a source close to the government body said. www.pcweek.com link to ZDNet Fred

To: E_K_S who wrote (6706)	1/13/1998 3:45:00 PM
From: Chung Yang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

It is flu season here at Silicon valley, I am not surprised at all if Ed Zander got the bug too. Make no mistake about it, the Darwin machines will sell. One of my friends is a Sun sales manager for their workstation products. Upon limited release of the Darwin boxes to some field testing customers a couple of months ago, one of them (a small company) immediately sent in an order for 100 boxes. GM also field tested these machines are reportedly got very excited about it. - Chung >>>>> Ed Zander's interview on CNBC... He seemed to stumble as IMO a softball question was poised to him about the advantage of building these machines in ASIA. ED stated that "yes we have production facilities and "outsource" partners to build these machines in ASIA" but did not mention their competitive advantage in (1) component costs and (2) reduced labor costs associated with lower manufacturing costs in ASIA (ala Dell computer!). Ed Zanders did mention that Sun's overall margins on these machines would be quite good as they produce both the processor and the OS software (no sharing with Microsoft or Intel). Also Zanders voice cracked during the interview and he did not seem to be as enthusiastic about their line up of new machines. It will be interesting to see how the press spins this announcement. EKS <<<<