Loren Loverde Affecting Quotations

Currently, the economic environment is not the critical factor affecting PC adoption cycles. What we're seeing now is a combination of PC replacements and new users responding to low-price milestones.

The cumulative impact of a worsening economy, declining capital investments and reduced consumer spending is strongly affecting the Japanese market. Although the Japanese market resisted for a while, it now looks like the PC market in Japan will be flat-to-negative into 2002.