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

To: Dorine Essey who wrote (12223)	4/27/1998 7:43:00 AM
From: Linda Kaplan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213177

Headline: INTERVIEW-Apple says poised to make comeback ====================================================================== By Tan Ee Lyn HONG KONG, April 27 (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) is confident of securing greater world market share and believes it is poised to make a comeback in the home user consumer market. "We believe that in the last calendar quarter of this year, Apple will begin to grow in our market (share) year over year," said Mitchell Mandich, senior vice present of worldwide sales. "We think we have the product strategy, sales strategy to really help accelerate that growth. So in a couple more quarters we will begin to grow revenues," Mandich said in an interview. Famous for its ease of use, the Apple brand has steadily lost its market share in homes to Microsoft Windows-based systems because consumers feel far more programs can be used on it. Apple's world market share has slid to just 4.6 percent from 9.6 percent in 1993, according to International Data Corp. In Europe, its share is between three and 3.5 percent compared with market leader Compaq Computer Corp (NYSE:CPQ) with 15.1 percent in 1997, and International Business Machines Corp (NYSE:IBM), Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer Corp (NASDAQ:DELL) following with 9.5, 6.7 and 5.8 percent respectively, according to market researcher CONTEXT of London. But in fields such as publishing and education where Apple loyalty is fierce, the company's market dominance is anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent worldwide, Mandich said. And the company is poised to re-enter the home, he said. "We are going to get reinvigorated in the consumer market. Over the last several years we've really been pulling out of the consumer market and we haven't had a product that really fits the price point of today's consumers," Mandich said. "You're going to see Apple later in this year with some products more oriented towards the consumer, the home user," he said. The company, which lost some US$1.8 billion in the last two fiscal years, returned to the black in the two most recent quarters. Between October and December 1997 it had a profit of $47 million and between January and March 1998 profits stood at $55 million. "In the last quarter, we grew our units by eight percent on a worldwide basis," Mandich said. "We expect unit growth to continue and we expect revenue growth in the last calendar quarter of this year," he said. Apple's stock has also been buoyed in recent months since the company said in December that it was keeping its co-founder and interim CEO Steve Jobs on the payroll for a while longer. Mandich said Jobs's tenure at Apple could stretch further. "My view is that he will continue in the interim CEO job for the foreseeable future. We suspect that we'll be together as a team for a while and Steve will be there as well," he said. Jobs, who has made clear that his position was only temporary, took up the post in September 1997 after former CEO Gilbert Amelio was ousted by the board in July 1997. A hunt has since ensued to find a permanent CEO, but Mandich said the search was now on the back burner. "We're not really doing much of a search for a CEO. You can say it's on the back burner. It's going very slowly." -- Hong Kong Newsroom (852) 2843-6371; Fax (852) 2845-0636 Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service