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From: zimmer@calvin.stanford.edu (Andrew Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: We're No. 2
Message-ID: <1991Apr5.200900.9099@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 5 Apr 91 20:09:00 GMT
Sender: news@neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 55

We're No. 2 -- really

Next's claim will be news to H-P, IBM, Digital

By Lee Gomes
Mercury News Staff Writer

  And the nation's No.2 professional work-station
vendor is ... Next Inc.?
  That's the eye-popping claim Steve Jobs is mak-
ing for his beleaguered computer company, based
on a rather selective release of sales figures from
the Redwood City firm.
  Anxious to keep the world from writing off Next
altogether because of its slow start, Jobs told
reporters Thursday that Next sold 8,000 machines
in the first three months of the year.  And, that he
said, makes the company the second-biggest sup-
plier, after Sun Microsystems Inc, in the previous-
ly unknown category of "professional work sta-
tions."
  Such machines, the company said, are "unlike
traditional scientific/technical work stations", and
are instead "designed for non-technical users."
  Most estimates of the work-station market have 
Sun out in front, followed by such giants as
Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment, and IBM.  Sun
shipped 44,000 machines in the last quarter of 1990
-- though Next maintained that only 11,000 of 
them were "professional work stations."
  "And what were the other machines we 
shipped?" wondered Kim Miller, a Sun spokes-
woman.
  When Next announced two new models in Sep-
tember, it said that, based on months of sales work,
it had orders for 15,000 machines.  It began produc-
ing the new models in November and shipped 1,500
before year's end.
  Of the 8,000 machines it shipped from January 
to March, up to 40 percent were simply filling
orders from the 15,000 announced last year, said
Todd Rulon-Miller, Next's director of sales.
  So did last quarter's sales represent a genuine
breakthrough for Next, or were they simply filling 
an existing backlog?
  Rulon-Miller insisted the quarter was the start of
something big, but declined to release any other
sales figures -- such as current bookings or actual
manufacturing projections -- to bolster that case.
  "We're a private company," he said.

(End of article.)

Andrew
zimmer@calvin.stanford.edu