Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: rupert1 who wrote (36694)	11/16/1998 5:39:00 PM
From: Elwood P. Dowd	Respond to of 97611

Compaq's chief talks 'direct' By Thom Calandra, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 4:41 PM ET Nov 16, 1998 NewsWatch LAS VEGAS (CBS.MW) -- If this is the post-PC era, as one financial publication put it at the Comdex technology show this week, Compaq Corp. CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer must be in the wrong city. Pfeiffer, in an enlightening speech Monday, never let us forget that the world's largest personal computer maker still depends on boxes to remain atop the heap. Compaq (CPQ) makes about 13 percent of all PC sales worldwide, more than Dell Computer or IBM or Gateway. Still, Compaq, like many companies at the technology industry's largest trade show, "is transforming itself," Pfeiffer said. Translation: Compaq will push speedy customer service from 10,000 sales and service representatives. Pfeiffer, a week after Compaq adopted Dell's (DELL) direct sales methods, said direct-to-customer sales of desktops and laptops via the Internet and toll-free phone numbers are running twice as much as his executives' hopes. Personal touches Striking a theme likely to be repeated again and again this week, Pfeiffer said "the planetary scale of the Internet" is making customers more demanding and computer sellers more responsive. See related story. Pfeiffer said Compaq has every intention of defending itself against Dell's direct-sales assault, which has been enormously successful and has turned Dell into a stock-market darling. "Compaq is the industry leader (11.5 million PC sales vs. 7.5 million for IBM and 4.5 million for Dell in 1997), a position we definitely intend to keep," he said. How? By turning Compaq into more than just a "vendor of boxes," said Pfeiffer, who gets the lion's share of the credit for quintupling yearly sales to more than $25 billion since 1991. Pfeiffer also oversaw Compaq's purchases of Digital and Tandem. The silver-haired CEO said Compaq's direct sales model is more than just shipping computers to customers in fewer than five days. Instead, Pfeiffer said the speed of the Internet combined with personal touches will boost sales and customer loyalty. Ultimate Internet Pfeiffer, touching on the growing popularity of home networks, unveiled several Internet-ready computers for home use. One of them, the Presario 5100C, will cost $1,600 and allow broadband Internet connections on a lightning fast computer with a 400-megahertz AMD chip and a vast hard drive for storage. Another, called the Ultimate Internet PC, will cost less than $3,000. In a touch of the 21st century, Pfeiffer also unveiled FaceWorks, a three-dimensional face based on a computer user's own features. The imagery, he said, will be used to personalize e-mail and jazz up companies' sales presentations. "We need to soften the hard edges of the technology we develop," he said. Pfeiffer took care not to mention competitors IBM (IBM), Dell and Gateway (GTW) more than once or so by name. Instead, he left no doubts that his company's hardware will continue to accommodate operating systems from Microsoft (MSFT) and integrated circuits from Intel Corp. (INTC). Microsoft's Windows NT and Digital's Unix operating systems will continue to mesh, he said. "Customers will continue to have mixed systems," he said. Compaq will also support Intel's new line of Merced computer chips. Compaq also will provide support for Microsoft's SQL 7.0 database product with an ActiveAnswers set of questions and answers for corporate administrators of computer networks, he said.