On Feb 9, 10:45 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> __/ [ John Bailo ] on Friday 09 February 2007 22:17 \__
>
> > Another fine company being sucked down in the vortex of the Titanic
> http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/gateway-shares-slump-almost-10/...
Gateway has been suffering from Microsoft addition for many years
now. They only started making a little profit last two quarters
because of the demand for Linux-friendly AMD-64 and Intel Duo
machines, both of which run in 64 bit Linux mode, even though they are
sold with 32 bit Windowns.
Gateway has a notorious reputation of being Linux hostile and this has
been costing them a substantial portion of the corporate market. It's
actually pretty remarkable that Gateway made a profit at all, but $8
million on $1 billion in revenue isn't even 1%, while Microsoft gets
85% profits.
Gateway needs to step outside the box, the way Apple did.
Unlike other OEMs who must depend on Microsoft authorised retailers,
who seem to be restricted in their ability to show products not
approved by Microsoft, Gateway has it's own stores and could put
anything they want into their stores. Hopefully Gateway will take a
lesson from Apple and create a product that is really their own, not
Microsoft's commodity products.
> > Gateway Chief Executive Ed Coleman attributed the revenue decline to
> > weaker-than-normal demand in its retail business, as distributors worked
> > through machines run by Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system
> > while they waited for Vista, the Windows upgrade released to consumers
> > in January.
Looks like the next quarter could be pretty ugly too, especially if
Vista responses still end up being so "ho hum".
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