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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BGR who wrote (119770)	4/21/1999 9:32:00 PM
From: Eggolas Moria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Hmmm . . . I will have to take a look at that. Thanks. After IBM disclosed in March that it had lost close to $1 billion in its PC business last year, there was speculation that the company may try to shed that operation. But IBM said Wednesday that its PC sales grew by 50% from the first quarter a year ago. In an interview with Dow Jones late Wednesday, CFO Maine said most of that growth came from Thinkpad laptops and Netfinity servers. He said IBM likely gained market share in the PC business in the first quarter and that the division was the key factor to the strong hardware growth rate in the period. In the fourth quarter, hardware revenues disappointed Wall Street. Maine said the commercial PC business was "a tough competitve environment worldwide," particularly in general-purpose desktop PCs that are hard to differentiate. But he said Thinkpads and Netfinity servers are different from competitors' offerings, so those two products combined grew at a rate better than 50% from the first quarter last year. In the interview, he said IBM has an "embryonic" program of selling computers directly to customers over the Internet or the telephone. Selling computers directly has been the key to Dell Computer Corp.'s (DELL) rapid rise, but other companies have had a tough time emulating it. Compaq, for one, has alientated some of its reseller partners in its efforts to sell directly, analysts say. But Maine said that IBM's reseller partners are "fully aware of our strategy" and he doesn't forsee conflicts. "We think this will become a very succesful part of our strategy going forward," Maine said. Hmmm . . .