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

To: Don Dorsey who wrote (33133)	5/11/1998 4:58:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

DVD needs more marketing added at, "why should you buy." Right now the consumer doesn't get it...................................... May 11, 1998, TechWeb News -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marketing Misfires Clog the Channel By Roger C. Lanctot From Celeron to DVD to Windows 98, the best minds in the retail computer business-on the vendor side-seem to be conspiring to undermine the very industry they depend on. With these three technologies, manufacturers have clearly defined the distinction between what they want to sell, what retailers want to merchandise and what consumers want to buy. I still don't think consumers know why they are supposed to want to buy DVD drives, Celeron microprocessors or Windows 98. In a recent spot poll of visitors to Computer Retail Week's Web site (www.crw.com), two-thirds of respondents said they were not recommending that their customers reserve a copy of Windows 98. Why should they? Chances are that Windows 98 will be riddled with enough bugs and glitches to send even the most patient Windows user scurrying off to buy OS/2 or a Mac, or maybe even pick up Linux (which is free, of course). Vendors are more focused on legal, competitive and standards issues than they are on selling and marketing products. Celeron is being proffered by Intel as an affordable Pentium II-class system for "entry-level" consumers. Intel might as well say, "Come and get it, sucker." So, while CompUSA took the check (from Intel or Hewlett-Packard, or both) to put the Celeron-based Pavilion 8250 on the cover of its preprinted flier a week ago, Computer City made hay with a $799 233MHz Pentium PC from HP on the cover of its flier. Also on the cover of the Computer City flier was an offer to reserve a copy of Win 98 by paying in advance, with the incentive of "$200 in free merchandise." The free merchandise was a grab-bag of applications software that was nowhere near the top of my shopping list, including utility titles that might well be seen as redundant, given the contents of Win 98 itself. A better incentive for a Win 98 reservation would be a choice of a USB microphone or scanner or a TV tuner card. Offer consumers stuff that they might actually want, and that makes use of the enhanced capabilities of the operating system upgrade. The applications offered by Computer City aren't even native to Win 98. techweb.com