Xref: utzoo comp.misc:1902 misc.headlines:2383 misc.jobs.misc:1230 talk.rumors:1055
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,misc.headlines,misc.jobs.misc,talk.rumors
Subject: Re: Doom and Gloom, as they say, revisited (computer market failures)
Message-ID: <665@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 8 Feb 88 09:52:42 GMT
References: <1177@polyslo.UUCP>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 42

In article <1177@polyslo.UUCP> jbass@polyslo.UUCP (John L Bass) writes:
>
>It seems that some people could not follow the train of thought
>in my first posting ... here it is a little slower ...

Most of the reply postings I saw seemed to follow your train of thought
perfectly well - they just didn't agree with you.  You now seem to be
on your own dead-end line :-)

>	We have sold in the US something between 15 and 20 million PC's
>	in the last few years.

True.

>	Based on some off-the-cuff population estimates I guess the
>	US PC market installed base will stop about 20 million units.

Untrue.  I have worked in offices where the PC to personnel ratio was
greater than one.  I have worked in offices where everyone had their
own PCs in the office, and most had them at home.  I know many people
who own several PCs.  Your estimate is NOT based on fact, but on
suppositions, which I believe to be wrong.

>	If we accept this market size of 20 million units

But I do not, in any way, accept your market size offhand.  You don't
provide any data on how you arrived at this figure, and without that
I can't comment on its accuracy.  My feeling is that it is demonstrably
low - if we are approaching saturation, why is it that so many people
who don't have PCs are buying them now (I have at least 10 friends in
the PC market as I write this), and why is it that so many small businesses
are just now beginning to use them (due to plummeting prices), along
with other groups who, up until very recently, could not afford them?
Until you offer some rational reason why this should be so, and still
support your theory that the market is approaching saturation, I 
reserve the right to believe that your theory holds little water.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame