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

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (44425)	1/23/1999 5:41:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

To All, Barron's review. In general, an average issue. 1. Once again, the letters are the best part and I am not even in this issue <G>. Wayne Crimi writes a great note to lead off, slam dunking the silliness from Tom Galvin in last week's The Trader column. He nails the permabulls very well with his common sense arguments. Then, Larry Dixon ends the letter section with a remembrance of a cartoon from the 1960s that lampoons conservatives and their lack of compassion. It shows Barry Goldwater telling those who lived in slums: "If you had any ambition, you would inherit a department store." <G> One can almost use the same cartoon for Stevie Forbes, except Steve is nowhere like the conservative force Goldwater was. 2. Stephen Leeb has a confusing argument in the Market Watch section. He mentions that higher bond rates are a sign that Japan is coming back. So far, I agree. But then he says, "A stronger Asia goes hand in glove with a vigourous US economy." Uh, since when, Stevie? When Japan was strong in the 1970s and 1980s, they were taking global market share from the US. Bigtime. When Japan fell apart, the US took global market share from Japan in the 1990s. Yes, both the American economy and the Japanese economy were strong in the 1950s, but, at that time, they weren't really competitive. Dumb argument. 3. The Roundtable installment was boring this week. The only interesting comments were those by an inappropriately testy Art Samberg. He snapped at Kate Welling and fellow roundheads a couple of times for no reason, or, at least for no reason that could be found in the text. Art had the best performance of the group last year, buying garbage at the top and watching it go higher. He is trying the same thing this year. He loves Dell, which is "7 1/2% of a market that will grow at 16% next year." Two problems with that argument. First, Dell is selling at 75 times eps, so you need something besides those industry growth rates to make it a good deal. Secondly, the industry isn't going to grow 16% this year. Just as it didn't last year. He is a believer in the Y2K "everyone has to buy new boxes" scam. Wrong. He is also a fan of Home Depot, as if it isn't overpriced enough now. This guy seems to like whatever went up yesterday and buys into every sucker story out there. However, to his credit, he has a large number of shorts in his portfolio which he decides not to mention. Even the level headed Mario Gabelli was joining the herd on some of these overpriced POSs. However, Samberg made one good comment that out of the 100s of Internet stocks only 5 will be around in 10-15 years. And he buys index puts under his fluff portfolio. So, he is not a complete maroon. <G> MB

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (44425)	1/23/1999 11:22:00 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

<<I am hoping the disk drive makers will get there, but they are not there yet.>> Here is a press release from IDC about tape storage. ------------ Worldwide Tape Storage Market Posts Healthy Revenue Gain in 1998 But Units Drop, According to IDC Framingham, MA, January 19, 1999 — According to a recently published Tape Storage Year-In-Review bulletin from International Data Corporation (IDC), it is estimated that the worldwide tape drive market grew to $3.3 billion in OEM value for a 6% annual gain, despite a 5% decline to 4.7 million unit shipments at the close of 1998. "The decline in unit growth was mainly due to the transition away from desktop tape storage solutions to those aimed at servers," says Robert Amatruda, Senior Analyst for IDC's Storage Mechanisms group. As a result of increased shipments in the DLT category and a larger proportion of high-cost drives in the half-inch cartridge market, overall ASVs worldwide increased by 13% to $701 in 1998. However, IDC believes that worldwide ASVs will grow slowly, with more heated price competition in the midrange market, which includes DC6000, 4mm, 8mm and DLT categories. IDC forecasts ASVs worldwide will increase a scant 1% to $706 in 1999. Top 5 Tape Drive Revenues and Shipments by Technology DC2000 segment remained the unit volume leader, accounting for 41% of all tape drives shipped and 8% of the total "if sold OEM" revenue. The worldwide DC2000, or Travan, market is estimated to total 1.9 million units, which represents a 19% decline over last year, and its total "if sold OEM" market value is expected to decline to $265 million in 1998. Tape drives in the DC2000 market aimed at the desktop remain under pressure from high capacity removable magnetic products, like the Zip drive from Iomega and SuperDisk. However, IDC believes that the Travan NS effort to repackage the technology as a file-and-print product for the fast-growing PC server space will not fully offset the overall market decline. Worldwide shipments of DC6000 dropped by 7% in 1998 to 304,000 and "if sold OEM" market value declined by 4% to $127 million. The DC6000 market is transitioning away from desktop-oriented storage solutions. Currently, Tandberg Data is the sole manufacturer in this segment but Overland Data will commence production in 1999. The worldwide 4mm market totaled $1.03 billion "if sold OEM" value, with 1.8 million drive units in 1998. IDC expects growth in the 4mm drive market to moderate in 1999 with the slow adoption of DDS-4. In terms of price and performance, DDS-4 will be close to drive offerings in the 8mm segment — specifically Sony's Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) drive. "If sold OEM" revenues for the worldwide 8mm market grew modestly by 7% to reach $306 million in 1998 and shipments increased by 8% to total 230,000 units. Growth in this segment has moderated in the past two years due to the strong growth in DLT. Quantum's DLT has experienced strong growth in 1998 and has emerged as the de facto standard tape technology in the midrange tape arena. DLT's "if sold OEM" market value jumped to 30% in 1998, totaling $983 million. IDC believes that the OEM agreement between Quantum and Tandberg Data will have a positive impact on the further expansion of DLT tape technology. Top 5 Worldwide Tape Drive Unit Leaders Hewlett-Packard gained 2 points of unit share over 1997 to reach 33% of the total worldwide units, resulting in 1.5 million units shipped. Seagate lost a point of unit share over last year to end up at 23% and 1.1 million units shipped. Iomega dropped 2 points of unit share over last year to arrive at 13% and 603,000 units shipped. Quantum gained slightly, increasing its annual unit share 2 points to 9% and shipping 403,000 units in 1998. Sony made a small 1 point improvement over 1997 in 1998 with 8% unit share and 397,000 units shipped. The bulletin also gives 1999 forecasts for worldwide tape drive revenue and shipments by technology, as well as a look at new tape formats for 1999. For more information or to purchase this bulletin (#B18103), Tape Storage, 1998 Year in Review and 1999 Forecast, call Cheryl Toffel at 1-800-343-4952, ext. 4389. IDC's Web site (http://www.idc.com) contains additional company information, recent news releases, and offers full-text searching of the latest available research. idc.com