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Technology Stocks : NCDI - Network Computing Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Just4fun2 who wrote (3520)	2/27/1998 11:33:00 AM
From: Mark Orsi	Respond to of 4453

This is fun - wish I didn't sell any back in January. My share coverage (including options and actual shares) is about half what it was for the past 2 years. That will change in the next few days! - Mark

To: Just4fun2 who wrote (3520)	2/27/1998 2:50:00 PM
From: Doug Klein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4453

re: channel sales I could post a really long response to this, but I don't think I have the time just now. (It's the middle of the day.) I also don't want to pretend to be the world's expert on sales operations, (I'm pretty knowledgable, but it's not really my forte). Let me just put out some random comments that may address some of your issues. o Our sales, (less IBM), are essentially flat on a unit basis. The market we traditionally sell into, (alternative desktops for commercial Unix/mini/mainframe networks), is decreasing, and competitors (HP, specifically), are dropping out. We are actually increasing market share. This is actually a complement to our sales and marketing effort, but buried in internal only numbers, due to the fact that .. o .. our revenue in our traditional markets is declining. This is due to several factors. Our ASPs are taking a hit due to increased pressure of 'cheap' PCs, competitive products, (a certain big blue company comes to mind), a decreasing percentage of monitors sold with units, (commodity PC monitors work and are being used more and more), and higher performance of our lower priced systems due to technology advances. None of it a surprise, just something we need to work to overcome with new opportunities. o New markets have not yet opened up for us. The Java crowd really hasn't come up with a compelling application story to drive sales against Windows, and the delay in multi-user NT has stalled the use of our product in the more traditional 'network terminal' mode. o Our products are bound to be relatively low margin items. No surprise there. Low margin products need highly efficient (read => low cost) sales operations. These are going to be indirect channels. o Indirect channels don't generate sales. They fulfill demand. Marketing, either by us or others, needs to generate demand. Generating demand through sales is hugely expensive. We are not building indirect channels to do anything other than fulfill demand. We're not asking them to do our marketing job. o The 'thin client' success will most probably come (IMHO) from Windows terminals. This became quite clear to me over the course of 1997. The company is positioned very well to succeed in this market. The bulk of the energy over the next year will be towards this goal. Unfortunately it is pretty tied up to a few external events. Fortunately it appears that these events will happen according to plan. I don't know if this is useful or not, but I guess the bottom line to me is that I would fundamentally disagree with your perspective on the sales plans. I'm certainly willing to debate or expand on this, if you wish :).