July '99

Gorbatov K.   The Invisible City of Kitezh

Who loves its channels better? If you are the best in your business, you may easy suck yours partners and allies blood. But you can't do it forever. Consider Microsoft who enjoys 40% of margin while it keeps only tiny 5% to OEM's. Yes, it is done to force them to promote NT at their expenses - endless rush for better margin. But I'm afraid Compaq may just die before the master will let it to breathe. Ok, do you remember Apple iMac in July '98? It was so pricy, $1200 - who needs it? But it appears immediately in all showcases. The reason is simple: the manufacturing cost was just $600, thus margin is 50%. Apple took only 20%, while CompUSA and Sears got 30%! Not too bad. Next, we know that new iMac model comes every few months, and the reseller's channel is stuffed with old boxes. So in July '99 Apple sacrificed the whole month of direct sales to let the channels to clean-up. In exchange resellers will put PC's in the dust corner and promote new iMac, after July Macworld Expo. So, Apple got the retailer's buddy award.

Go to Wired.Com, and if you are lucky, you may see the "Mini-Golf" banner from Sun Microsystems. If you click it with mouse, you will be proposed to pass three pretty tricky golf holes. I spent ten minutes playing. It may happens that this little advertisement will bring more supporters for the Java technology than big papers and long-winded wrestling with malicious Redmond beast. Just show them the code. Sun gets the best ad banner award.

Amiga announced recently it is dropping one of the best modern OS's QNX to join the crush of Linux supporters. Although Amiga is right that this market is going to be huge, but it will compete directly with other Linux vendors like IBM, SGI, Dell, Compaq etc., etc. with the real risk to loose its unique face. The president Collas said: "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not to judge the Linux decision until you have a chance to read the technology brief". Ok, no award for them. And welcome on board, sure!