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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarksterh who wrote (29485)	4/10/1999 7:28:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 70976

PS What is your source for retail pc unit growth was up a whopping 1% in february.? Clark, My guess would be some turkey comparing February with January who doesn't realize that February had 28 days and that January is a traditional channel inventory clearing month of all the crap that didn't sell over Christmas. So shorter month compared against higher volumes resulting from bargain basement clearouts in January. I suspect that on a seasonally adjusted basis, if the number is accurate, it would probably show enormous relative growth. But just the fact that it came from Skeeter is a source of reassurance. I know that even if the data is correct, it's almost certainly taken out of context. Normally I don't waste any time reading his stuff, but I do read all of yours. I do that because what you post has value. have a good weekend, Ian.

To: Clarksterh who wrote (29485)	4/10/1999 8:19:00 PM
From: FJB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Clark, It's been pretty widely reported that DRAM pricing for 64Mb parts has dropped from the $10.50 to $11.00 level at its peak in early January to $7.50 to $8.00 now. Pricing will most likely remain weak until the third quarter. What is your source for retail pc unit growth was up a whopping 1% in february.? The February one percent YOY drop are PC Data numbers for the US retail market. news.com Bob

To: Clarksterh who wrote (29485)	4/11/1999 4:34:00 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

>>Care to share the source for that?<< exchange2000.com 2/4 - $76, now below $57 for 64 MB module... >>This is normal and is not, repeat not, a sign of overall price erosion<< au contrare, when the rapid drop occurs from a point where the dram mfrs are making a dime a q, it is a BIG deal! >>compaq says that business sales are weak. and Dell says they are strong.<< who is cherry picking? dell says qly sequential rev growth will slow to mid single digits. notice the word s-l-o-w (that is a bad trend). dell said that they will have to give up margins for market share... kip bedard (micron) said "demand for dram continues to remain strong" while they were still profitable in late 1997. he was right. so, how much money have they made due to "strong" demand since then? ;-) >>And in 96 the price of memory collapsed. So what? The past is the past. The price of memory is no longer dropping so fast. It is down about 15% in the last six months.<< dram pricing fell more than it should have due to asian inventory games. the pace of collapse has slowed, however, mu took the equivalent of more than all of txn's capacity offline last q. that is coming back online now and, voila, look at pricing go down! ;-) >>That is just silly. I'll bet you that in 2 years the $600 computer has at least twice the memory of the current $600 dollar. The only worry would be if the minimum price keeps dropping implying we can't find a minimum on the demand elasticity equation. Doesn't seem to be happening.<< e-machines came out last year with 32 mb of dram. guess how much dram their new model has? 32 mb. will it grow? maybe, maybe not. it depends. if dram gets cheap enough at the expense of the dram players, maybe. but, remember, when e-machines came on the scene, they were the lone cowboy. EVERYONE is now headed for the <$600 market now. what will e-machines do? <$400? microworkz already has a $299 pc on the drawing board to be released in a few months... already 500k on order. do you think it has 64 mb of dram? ;-) >>If there is any market I know it is wireless, and this is Ericsson speak for 'We're getting our asses kicked by Nokia, Lucent, and Qualcomm'. The telecom market is still growing by leaps and bounds - this I'll guarantee.<< i'll defer somewhat to your expertise in this area, however, there is handset pricing pressure that i am aware of first hand. drops of over 20%. that doesn't happen in a "strong" market where supply matches demand, imho... oh, and this is one of the players you mentioned as kicking ericson's butt...