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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (30355)	7/29/1998 6:24:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Tip, It depends upon whether you want the estimates or the real data. In both cases, IDC and Dataquest keep the numbers, but both are pricey sources. The odd thing is how much their estimates disagree, but, even scarier, how much their final numbers disagree. A lot of the confusion has to do with selling to the channel vs. sell-through to the final customer. But a few years back, when a portfolio manager for a hot fund, Seligman Communications and Technology, made the statement that pc sales had been growing at 25% a year for the past 5 years, I didn't even need the DQ or IDC numbers to know he was blowing smoke. Brokerage house reports showed that boxes had only grown more than 25% a year in two of those five years. Funny he wouldn't look up the numbers before making that statement in Barron's. MB