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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scrapps who wrote (16534)	7/1/1998 7:33:00 AM
From: David Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22053

Of mild interest and humor: An Anagram, as we all know, is a word or phrase made by transposing or rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. The following examples are quite astounding! Dormitory == Dirty Room Desperation == A Rope Ends It The Morse Code == Here Come Dots Slot Machines == Cash Lost in 'em Animosity == Is No Amity Snooze Alarms == Alas! No More Z's Alec Guinness == Genuine Class Semolina == Is No Meal The Public Art Galleries == Large Picture Halls, I Bet A Decimal Point == I'm a Dot in Place The Earthquakes == That Queer Shake Eleven plus two == Twelve plus one Contradiction == Accord not in it This one's amazing: [From Hamlet by Shakespeare] To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Becomes: In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten. And the grand finale: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." -- Neil A. Armstrong becomes: A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!

To: Scrapps who wrote (16534)	7/1/1998 10:32:00 AM
From: Moonray	Respond to of 22053

Slow sales hit modems C\|NET NEWS.COM - July 1, 1998, 5:00 a.m. PT Modem makers and component suppliers aren't expected to see financial relief anytime soon, as prices on the newest 56-kbps modems continue to plummet amid unexpectedly tepid demand. Modem manufacturers such as 3Com, Diamond Multimedia, and Hayes had hoped that the February adoption of an international modem standard, called V.90, would spur users to buy higher-priced, higher-margin 56-kbps products based on the new standard, thus remedying their bottom lines. But analysts say the migration to new products isn't occurring as fast as expected because the majority of Internet service providers have not completed their system upgrades or have relatively few high-speed lines available, causing many users to hold off on purchases. A 56-kbps modem offers roughly twice the connection speed of the older 28-kbps modems, found on the bulk of PCs now in use. An outbreak of fierce price competition could also put a squeeze on revenues at these large modem makers. Prices are already dropping fast on pre-standard (non-V.90) modems. Now, even the newer V.90 modems have seen price drops of $20 or more in the last month, reports Eric Kitchens, communications analyst with Associated Research Services. For example, some vendors are offering an external V.90 fax/modem from 3Com's U.S. Robotics for $129, down from around $159 last month. An external modem from Boca Research is available for as little as $90. Internal modems, which don't have a plastic case, are available for even less. As a result, modem component makers are suffering too. Chipmaker Rockwell Semiconductor has been hardest hit by the ongoing troubles. The company is the largest supplier of chipsets to modem makers, with fully 50 percent of revenues coming from this market, according to estimates from Forward Concepts. In part due to continued weakness in the market, Rockwell International said yesterday that the unit will be spun off as a separate company in hopes of gaining tax benefits and other efficiencies. "There has been a huge price erosion in V.90 chips. They started at about $55 each in late '96, were priced at $35 by the end of 1997, and are now in the low $20s. That's a tremendous drop, and it clearly means profit is down" for modem chip makers, said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts. Texas Instruments and Lucent are the two other large modem chip vendors, but haven't been as affected by price drops because of their more diversified product lines. Chipmakers and modem makers alike are looking to newer technologies such as cable modems and digital subscriber line modems to boost profits. Rockwell, for instance, is developing chips for DSL "Lite" modems, which would be easier to connect than current DSL modems and offer connection speeds many times that of even the fastest dial-up modems on the market today. Companies such as 3Com and Hayes have said they intend to offer DSL modems, while PC makers such as Dell Computer intend to offer the modems in a select number of systems by the end of the year. "The real salvation is when the DSL Lite chips ship late this year or early next year. The only problem is that there won't be offsetting revenues [from dial-up modem sales] from these markets for almost a year," Strauss thinks. The market for DSL chipsets will initially be small, due to the fact that DSL Lite service will be available in limited geographic areas. o~~~ O