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

To: Logos who wrote (45979)	6/2/1998 1:48:00 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 176387

Is Dell the low cost producer The answer depends on the product line. In consumer products CPQ is pretty clearly the low cost producer, but Dell does not have products in that space. I believe that among the big players, Dell is the low cost producer in most of the lines they produce, with the probable exception of the dimension products where they are probably equal but not a leader. Although Dell has a server line, they do not address a lot of the server space, so there again we have to look at where they compete. HP is in general probably the low cost producer at the moment, slightly ahead of CPQ which has a much larger R&D expense in the Intel-based server products (HP leverages Intel engineering heavily in their server products). Dell may have some advantages in a few of the server products. I would have to do quite a bit of digging to get the actual numbers, and if I know this thread I will be under pressure to do just that as soon as this post is public... As to ASP, I think it has more to do with product mix than shifts in price on specific products, although both have been at work on the ASPs at CPQ, IBM and HP. ASPs on particular products always decline over the product life, and over the last 5 years or so the trend has been for the price on mainstream products to fall to about 60% of entry price after about 12 to 18 months. The usual marketing trick is to re-skin the products as they pass thru the pipeline to maintain the positioning of the high end - the technology passes down through the products, and the badges maintain price within a band. The recent downward trend has been driven by a greater volume of these downstream products, and by the shift to more consumer-oriented components in commercial products (I don't want to get into detail here but this is a kind of 'value line' development which IMO devalues the commercial brands since users can not count on a higher standard of engineering or components on a brand basis). Hope this helps..