Without Inouye, Gateway searches for new direction

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Gartner is clueless, is Gateway?

Keep to what you are doing best... Followed by assertations that doing so is barely keeping the company running and the competition is going to get incredibly fierce in the next year with 3 OEMs biting the dust. That may be the dumbest recommendation Gartner has ever spewed.

Look, what Gateway needs to do is look at the markets they can NOT do any good in. In other words, use a process of elimination to narrow their focus and expand their thinking.

Can they be a low cost producer competitive with the current king, Dell, or the new comer, China? In my opinion, not a chance in this decade. On second thought, not in the next 5 decades. Gateway just can't match the labor difference or the buying advantage of the mega large PC OEMs.

Can they be a serious contender in servers or workstation class machines? I think they might be price competitive, but not a serious contender. The truth is this is the fishing hole of all the big players and Gateway isn't ready to play against Sun, IBM, HP, or even Dell in this market. Add to it the lack of support/services and supply side partnerships for this market and it's a bleak picture for Gateway.

The middle ground, retail store sales is all that's keeping them afloat and that boat doesn't look to be big enough to survive the coming storm. Crowding all the companies future in this boat doesn't seem like a good idea to me at all. I think Gartner is clueless to suggest it.

Waite may have been right, a move into devices and entertainment might have been a great move, the only problem was he didn't have Jobs vision for new products. If Gateway had built the *ICow* music player their fortunes would be very different today.

What should Gateway do today? Obviously find a CEO with vision and the nerve to push it. Let me hand you a free clue on this one Gateway, if the candidate is a bean counter or MBA, take a pass. You need VISION, not more "down sizing" to prolong a dying companies fall!

There ARE areas ripe for innovation and you CAN move on them. You want to win some vocal user support and build a loyal base? Try this on. Microsoft has made a lot of headway with the Multimedia Entertainment Center. (Regardless of what anyone posts, they have.) Sales are growing for all the OEMs in this area. There is no reason you can't take a different direction and provide a Linux based system with legal software as a direct competitor to these systems/OEMs.

The fact it is Linux based will attract the Linux users and if you did it well a lot of everyday Joe Average users. To attract Joe Average you need to make it simple, (MS's product is not really simple, it's a full blown version of WindowsXP) and easy to use. A minimal OS foot print put together with a few well intigrated apps could be a home run. Heck, you need a product model? Build a super TiVo and then feed it steroids and raw meat for 6 months.

There are opportunites out there, Gateway needs to get innovative with them and move ahead.

Posted by: No_Ax_to_Grind   Posted on: 02/09/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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