News and Analysis to 11^th June 2004

10 Marlboro Light and a Pentium PC please

The Thai government is using convenience stores to push the sale of its low cost Pentium-driven People’s PC. This measure was taken because the citizens have been slow in migrating from their lower spec PCs. The PCs will cost circa $400. Presumably they will throw in a carrier bag with the order.

IBM – I Build Mainframes

IBM is king of the servers according to IDC with 32% of the market. HP was second with 27% and gravity-driven Sun Microsystems down at 12% in third. Big Blue has focused on the high spec end of the server market so keeping it out of the way of low margin players like Dell. The death of the mainframe is thus greatly exaggerated.

Patchy performance

The software industry got a ticking off recently when 150 top US CEOs called for the industry to sort itself out, particularly with respect to security; so relieving users of the burden of managing patch upgrades. Looks like software consumers have had enough. Next thing you know they’ll start talking about consumer rights and software being ‘fit for purpose’. Areas that the software industry traditionally felt did not apply to them.

CSC wants EDS’s lunch

Outsourcing player CSC wants to knock EDS from the number 2 slot behind IBM. CSC appears to be on a roll whereas EDS appears to be on a tumble. EDS will probably and inadvertently play an active role in making this happen. However given EDS’s vulnerable status, Accenture might take this as an opportunity to consolidate its position as a world-class outsourcer.

Microsap

What is the world coming to when two market leaders decide that they need to consider merging for their future survival? Microsoft and Sap who look to have an unassailable lead in their main markets actually contemplated a merger. This emerged during the US Department of Justice court case against Oracle, which has designs on PeopleSoft. Microsoft would do well from this, as it would catapult the software giant to number one in one of its emerging strategic markets. It would also tip the .Net versus Java scales in Microsoft’s favour. Sap now says that it is not up for sale. However it would fit neatly into IBM’s strategic jigsaw and possibly even HP’s, subject to a little indigestion.

Hewlett Servers and Packard Printers

Wall Street analyst Steve Milunovich recommends that Hewlett Packard should split in two, printers and the rest. Surely there is some value in a CIO being able to purchase a farm of servers and a Deskjet printer or MP3 player for their son in the same order?!

MP3 to be chip driven

There certainly is a difference at McDonalds. Buy a Big Mac Value meal and you receive a unique access code which when used at the Sony Connect website enables you to download one MP3 music track for free. The offer is running in the US and will be coming to Europe on July 8^th. Given that this promotion is to celebrate the Big Mac surely a tie up with Apple would have been more appropriate.