Steve Fortuna Growth Quotations

IDC saw worldwide unit growth in 3Q of roughly 18.3 percent, while Dataquest saw worldwide unit growth around 15.2 percent. Averaging the two together puts it in the mid-to-high 16 percent range, which is roughly in line with our forecast 17 percent for 3Q.

We believe Dell will preannounce a miss for the January quarter, most likely within the next two weeks. We also think the company will use the opportunity to lower next year's sales growth outlook from 20 percent to 15-20 percent,

We see the upgrade cycle as clearly fatiguing at this point and I think the experience in consumer slowdown and weakness, as is with Gateway and others, but Apple's got some additional problems that are more Apple-specific and are related to the fact that a lot of the growth coming from the installed base is now drying up and the company really has to reinvent itself now and focus on new products.

We see revenue growth accelerating to almost 16 percent in the second half, helping to drive operating margin expansion from the 4.5 percent recorded in first quarter 2000, and the 5.4 percent that we expect this quarter, to 6.3 percent and 8.2 percent in the third and fourth quarters respectively.

Our view is that Apple has had very good growth over the past couple of years, largely driven by upgrade cycle to its existing installed base.

We see Europe as an important market for Gateway with lower PC penetration rates and the potential for higher long-term growth rates in the consumer & small business markets than in the U.S..