To: BillyG who wrote (29848 ) 2/23/1998 3:46:00 PM From: DiViT Respond to of 50808
Compaq Takes Third Of Retail PC Unit Sales And Revenuetechweb.com (02/23/98; 11:12 a.m. EST) By Roger C. Lanctot, Computer Retail Week Compaq sold the most PCs in the retail market for the seventh consecutive month in January, according to the latest sales report from PC Data. The Houston-based company captured 35.4 percent of unit sales and 34.6 percent of retail PC revenue, the highest share Compaq has seen since August of last year. Compaq's performance was aided by the company's 50 percent share of retail Intel Pentium II-based and Advanced Micro Devices K6-based PC sales. Packard Bell NEC moved decisively into second place with 17.7 percent of unit sales and 14.8 of retail PC revenue in January. Packard Bell shared second place with Hewlett-Packard in December, with both companies accounting for approximately 15 percent of sales. Packard Bell's greatest strength in January was its 42 percent share of MMX-enhanced Intel Pentium PC sales, compared with 24 percent for Compaq. "Whatever Pentium II product they have isn't selling at all," said Stephen Baker, senior hardware analyst for PC Data, in Reston, Va. He said Packard Bell's share of Pentium II sales was only 1 percent. "They're still No. 1 in MMX, but MMX is declining." Hewlett-Packard, in Palo Alto, Calif., slid back into third place, in a virtual dead heat with IBM in January. IBM's share of sales was up only slightly to 10.8 percent, while HP saw a five-percentage-point decline to 10.9 percent. HP took 11.7 percent of January retail PC revenue to IBM's 10.2 percent share. HP may have lost ground because it was in the middle of a line transition to its current offering, which arrived in stores during the past two weeks. IBM's strongest category was its 19 percent share of retail Intel PII-based PC sales. Both IBM and HP finished behind Apple in revenue share, as Apple rang up 11.9 percent of retail PC revenue in January. The company's 7.1 percent share of retail PC unit sales, including mail-order sales, was only good enough for a fifth-place finish.