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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sommers who wrote (10548)	9/5/1998 4:01:00 AM
From: ToySoldier	Respond to of 74651

You bring up some good points, but I would have to say that although Gerstner likely would like to see MSFT weakened in the IT industry (as would many other OEMs in the industry that believe MSFT is far to powerful and immature to be good for the industry) it is not a prime goal or objective for IBM. MSFT is a threat to IBM in only a few of its many positions in the computer industry - afterall IBM is about 6-7 times larger than MSFT. Until MSFT is leashed again, IBM will take advantage of what MSFT has so far created in the industry. With that said, IBM is completely against MSFT in areas of JAVA and CORBA. But then again, so is most of the major industry players. I think that IBM will not be merging with any other major vendor for the forseeable future. If there were a target merger that I think would be good for IBM its NOVELL. Heres why I think it would be good... 1) These two companies have little product clashing (except for Notes-GroupWise). 2) They both have strong commitments to open industry standards of JAVA, CORBA, and all the TCP/IP and internet standards (something MSFT is very well known to either be against or wants to mutate). 3) IBM's OS/2 is a near dead NOS and NOVL has a NOS that still maintains the largest installed base of connected nodes. 4) NOVL desperately needs a powerful marketing tool and major account penetration - something that IBM is world renowned for. 5) Their management suites could be 100% integrated. 6) IBM would get the most mature and most used Directory Service in the industry. 7) etc. etc. etc. As much as I think this should happen - I dont think it will. As for my position on MSFT. I have always said that I was generally nuetral in the early summer but as the Trial dates start up and mount up, this will be the signal of a long and slow downward trend of the MSFT stock. I think that triple digit stock prices will not be common anymore and I think the stock will retract into the $70s by year-end. MSFT's woes will only escalate next year as Y2K issues and the delayed NT5 limited non-acceptance will take its toll on MSFT. If MSFt does grow out of all this in good health then I would see an up-turn in Q2-2000. That is when the Y2K issues will hopefully have been mostly put to sleep and NT5 will have matured enough to have a few Service Patches out. So there you have it. I more than expect the Pro-MSFTers to attack my negative predictions of MSFT's future, but I welcome it if they provide valid arguments against my points. Later Sommer and have a good long weekend. toy