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To: Harry Landsiedel who wrote (39613)	12/11/1998 2:10:00 PM
From: David E. Taylor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

Harry: Your last point is an often-overlooked one. Around 50%-60% of US/worldwide PC sales are in the "all other vendors" (= "white box") category. This "white box" market share used to be even higher, but "white box" unit shipments seem to have been more or less flat even as overall worldwide PC unit sales have increased. The effect of this for the major vendors like DELL/CPQ/IBM/HWP et al is that for example a 15% worldwide growth in PC shipments translates into a 30% or higher growth for the major vendors as they soak up most of the increased unit demand. I suspect that this trend is due to the fact that the price differential between the major vendors and the "white box" vendors has been narrowing, probably as a result of the decreases in component prices and improvements in manufacturing efficiencies. I also suspect that this trend will continue, because all other things being equal, people would rather buy a PC from a well known vendor than a "white box" no-name vendor. On the other hand, the move of some of the channel distributors like Ingram Micro into the PC assembly business would indicate that they too are after a piece of this "white box" market share. David T.