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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BillyG who wrote (30634)	3/9/1998 5:36:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Creative had 75% of the DVD-ROM up-grade market in Jan. First DVD-Recordible doesn't have a codec............... ijumpstart.com Creative Labs Increases DVD Upgrade-Kit Push: Company Has Share Lead of Weak Retail Market Creative Labs Inc. [CREAF] expects the transition from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM to happen quicker than most vendors in PC circles, and the company has additional after-market bundles and configurations for system integrators. In addition to the company's Encore DVD kit, the company will ship five additional shrink-wrapped offerings by month's end. Two of them are targeted at OEM customers-a market Creative is trying to grow. DVD Upgrade Kit Sales Company Market Share Creative Labs 75% IBM* 15% Philips 5.6% Hi-Val 3.3% Other 1.1% *ThinkPad Peripheral Sales Source: PC Data According to the most recent information from PC Data, which tracks sales at the major national PC retail chains, Creative had 75 percent of the DVD upgrade-kit business in January. But that market was relatively small, less than 3,000 units in January and less than 7,000 for all of 1997. Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. [DIMD] didn't even register a market presence. Ken Wirt, Diamond's vice president of marketing, said the company built very few bundles with first-generation drives. He acknowledged that the company has almost no DVD after-market presence and "very little inventory." However, he is concerned given the weak sales thus far. The real DVD contest in the upgrade-kit business won't even begin until the second or third quarter when more content is expected to ship up and give people a reason to spend money for drives and decoders. Vendors are making an effort to increase volume and drive down prices to give developers the encouragement they need to create more DVD-ROM content. "Less than a year ago the premium for DVD was $429, and now we're saying it's going to be $70," Wirt said, separating the price of the DVD drive from the rest of the company's second-generation kit, which is scheduled to ship in by June for $299. Creative also is doing its part to bring down DVD-ROM prices. The company dropped the price of its Encore kit from $379 to $299 last month. Content Incentives Regardless of which company becomes the dominant DVD after-market vendor, the competition is good for the industry as a whole and should give software publishers more incentive to start pumping out titles. To drive sales, both Creative and Diamond will tie future DVD offerings to graphics, and Diamond looks to have a head start in that category. Diamond's second kit (model MC20) will include Chromatic Research's Mpact 2 chip as well as DVD-ROM titles. This summer Creative will ship a kit called the Graphics Blaster Exxtreme DVD with a drive and a Permedia 2 chip from 3Dlabs . The company has not set pricing. (Creative Labs, 408/428-6600; Diamond Multimedia, 408/325-7000; PC Data, 703-435-1025) Plans for DVD-RAM Creative executives expect to preview DVD-RAM upgrade kit later this month at WinHEC in Orlando and hope to ship the product before the end of the spring. Chris Kukshtel, Creative product marketing manager, expects to price the unit at $600 to $700 and doesn't plan to include any special authoring software or MPEG-2 encoder with the initial product release. "We think the larger market for DVD-RAM is mass storage," he said. Diamond's Ken Wirt said DVD-RAM isn't on the road map yet because the company doesn't consider shipping products if it can't sell 100,000 units.

To: BillyG who wrote (30634)	3/10/1998 2:47:00 AM
From: Al. Gibberd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Does anyone have information about when ARM (Advanced Risc Machines) is going to float on the NASDAQ? I am a owner of Acorn shares. Will Acorn and Apple share holders receive discounts on ARM shares? Acorn ( ACN in UK )and Apple ( APPL ) each have a 43% stake in ARM. It was reported in the Sunday Times (UK newspaper)on the 21 December 1997 that ARM would float early 1998. You can locate this article at :http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/97/12/21/stibusnws03010.html?2271790 OR sunday-times.co.uk Free registration at this site, then check back issues. I think ARM will be very hot stock, ARM chips seem to be going into everything. The Intel ( INTL ) ARM deal is also a major boost for both ARM and Intel.