Mark Stahlman Market Quotations

We thought they would have a good quarter but it looks like they had an excellent quarter, ... With these bookings numbers you have to toss out any idea that IBM is losing ground in services. They are probably picking up market share.

It's clear there is a segment of the consumer market that is price insensitive and more interested in advanced features than concerned about getting the lowest possible price, ... That's a segment Apple does very well in; so does Hewlett-Packard. Dell has to try to sell to that customer.

There's a growing feeling that Apple isn't the media's best friend. The media companies see downloading (content) as the future of their businesses, and they don't like one company holding 70% or 80% of the market share for making that content available.

I think this quarter demonstrates how unsettled market conditions are. The old IBM doesn't fit with the new markets. IBM understands this and is trying to move quickly to change itself. This elephant has been dancing on stilts.

Knowledgeable, high-end buyers today want AMD, ... Dell doesn't sell AMD. So they have gone into this important market with one hand tied behind their back.

This upgrade to 64 bits, which begins with servers, workstations and high-end game machines, is going to ripple through the entire market place. A year from now, very few people are going to be looking for 32 bit notebooks. This is a very big change. All the new software being written is (for 64-bit processors), so the consumer has a real choice for the first time in maybe 10 years.