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

To: rupert1 who wrote (57734)	4/14/1999 7:00:00 AM
From: rupert1	Respond to of 97611

I like HWP statements that IBM and CPQ are wrong about weakness in the market. That gives us hope for growth. April 14, 1999 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hewlett-Packard Unveils New Line Of Servers, Filling Gap in Products By DAVID P. HAMILTON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Hewlett-Packard Co. announced a new line of midrange servers, plugging a gap in its product line and putting it back into competition with Sun Microsystems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. Analysts said H-P's N-Class servers, priced starting at $48,000, should help the Palo Alto, Calif., computer giant catch up to its competitors in the market for servers, powerful computers that increasingly run everything from corporate networks to Internet-based electronic commerce. The new machines are designed to pick up the slack from the company's aging K-Class line, whose sales started to wane late last year, analysts said. Company Profile: Hewlett-Packard William Russell, chief operating officer for H-P's enterprise-computing division, said the new servers bring it back into contention with a vengeance. H-P released a slew of performance statistics intended to show its new servers are twice as fast as competing machines at a fraction of the cost. Such measures, however, are generally taken with a grain of salt, say analysts such as Michelle Bailey of International Data Corp. "There's kind of an expectation in the market that there will always be a better benchmark" with new servers, she says. Ms. Bailey, however, welcomed the N-Class announcement: "It's good that they're able to put themselves in competition against Sun there." In addition to their performance advantage, H-P said the N-Class servers are the first that can be easily upgraded to a new Intel Corp. server-class microprocessor code named Merced and expected next year. H-P currently uses a home-designed microprocessor known as PA-RISC, but by 2003 plans to switch its server line over entirely to Merced and its successors, which H-P helped to design. Separately, Chairman Lewis Platt said H-P's PC sales remain healthy, adding that his company is on track to see double-digit sales growth in the PC business this year. Just four days after Compaq Computer Corp. said first-quarter profits would be hurt by sluggish PC sales and price competition, Mr. Platt said H-P's PC sales are "healthy, growing and profitable," and likely to remain strong for "several more years." Mr. Platt also took issue with IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Louis Gerstner, who recently declared the PC era "over." In a veiled reference to IBM's recent announcement that its PC business lost almost $1 billion in 1998, Mr. Platt said, "Maybe for them." In New York Stock Exchange composite trading, H-P closed at $70.8125, up $2.4375.