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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: van wang who wrote (9686)	3/18/1998 12:51:00 PM
From: gmccon	Respond to of 213176

>> but the glut CPQ has is in the business/corporate segment (which now get a complete system (including monitor) for less than $875 << The best thing that could happen to APPL is for CPQ and like companies to dump their glut into the business/corporate markets. They would be reducing the glut at their own expense, not Apple's. Greg

To: van wang who wrote (9686)	3/18/1998 1:29:00 PM
From: Robert Boylin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213176

van wang says >>Dorine...AAPL must have a growth plan.. The post dismisses consumer products saying that Apple lives or dies on PC sales an in not competitive in the low cost PC market which will effect them adversely as PC makers dump excess inventory and push low cost boxes to increase sales. This ignores some basics of Apple's markets and their "growth plan". First, yesterday Apple announced Fall intros of low-cost models superior in performance and price to Intel competitors. Second, Apple's corporate market is minor compared with their graphics/eduction/home sectors. Their business users are typically small firms who don't follow typical corporate buying patterns. In professional graphics firms they have a dominant share, probably over 2/3rds of total boxes. These users are not interested in low cost boxes! The home and educational markets are suffering from lack of low cost Mac models. Apple will be addressing those market ASAP this year. Bottom line quarterly profits are also important to Apple's credibility in the short term. Third, Apple's Rhapsody servers combined with NC models will address education and consumer product markets with essentially the same technology. This is an entirely new growth sector which has not taken off due to the competitor's lack of credible products. Forth, the Internet business market will be aggressively addressed by Rhapsody technology combined with WebObjects currently used by many large firms. Apple already has a dominant position in web page creation due to their graphics superiority. This will be expanded with their QuickTime software tools and platform support for multimedia creation. Fifth, Apple will likely start to make cross-platform OSes an important factor in their future plans and announce some of that strategy in May's Developer conference. Summary: The PC market's profits will suffer for the next two years as their Intel based capabilities will not make sufficient progress to impress users of the need to purchase. Low cost box sales increase as users see no need to buy the claimed advantages of higher cost PCs. Those firms still using DOS and Win 3.x will likely buy quantities of these cheap PCs. The bottom line will suffer a modest squeeze as the higher priced model's contribution to margin share shrinks. IBM and Motorola will be making news worthy advances in chip designs enlarging the performance lead at a lesser price than Intel's. Mac's with superior speed processors will be capable of running Intel based software at acceptable speeds allowing low cost models to compete on ease of use and support issues combined with their NC marketing push. Apple does have a growth plan, it is far different than Compac's, and includes a heathy contribution from branded consumer products.