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Gateway Completes eMachines Acquisition
ryanjensen writes "Gateway just completed its $289.5 million deal to acquire Irvine, CA-based eMachines Thursday according to News.com. From the article: 'Many analysts believe that Gateway ultimately will abandon some or all of its namesake stores in favor of selling products at third-party retailers. However, they expect the company to continue selling Gateway-brand products, including PCs and consumer electronics, directly to its customers.'"
Does this mean that they will start selling AMD processors? Great - all they need to do now is get Microsloth to stop delaying 64-bit Windows for Intel.
It'll be ready in January my ass...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Maintaining a retail presence is a nightmare for anyone unless they keep qualified techs handy. That's the one reason people will 'like' a brick & mortar offering.
And, not to spark a fight, but there's no accounting for what Jobs is thinking.
Maybe Gateway will fix what's wrong at Gateway, too.
Over the last few years, I've been awfully disappointed with Gateway. Dell and HP have their problems too, but Gateway puts together overpriced crappy machines filled with cheap parts. You're paying for the 1-800...
At least with e-Machines, you get what you pay for. Gateway produces the same level of machine, but charges you a lot more for them.
It's against federal law for Intel to force Gateway to NOT use one of their competitor's chips... any contract that does so would seem to violate any number of anti-monopoly laws...
IANAL...
Apple is a marketing genius - Gateway is a computer company that sells computers just like everyone else.
When Apple wants a good MP3 player - they create one from scratch and THEN create a market for it (iPod + iTunes Music Store)
Gateway wants an MP3 player - they copy the iPod or actually copy a clone already on the market.
Gateway wants a camera, they rebrand a Canon, Gateway wants a printer, same thing - rebrand.
When Apple was rebranding, they were in dire straits - HP inkjets - 630c rebranded as Stylewriter 4500 - Canon Inkjets - rebranded as Stylewriter 2500 Quicktake Camera (developed by Apple and exclusive to them for 6 months) but really just a rebranded Fuji DS7 camera. Apple chooses to cater to the base and to innovate. Gateway - what base do they have to cater to - a PC is a PC is a PC - if someone offered the same box $5 cheaper 2 miles closer than the Gateway Store, they'd buy it. Apple has a brand and they market and please it's customers (mostly)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Apple's stores are always going to do better, in terms of revenue, than Gateway's stores. Why? Because - assuming there's one of either store located near you - you can buy a PC anywhere. At Gateway's store, at Best Buy, at CompUSA, hell, you can even buy a PC at Wally-Mart. It might not be a Gateway (and, in fact it might), but it's a PC, and it can run Windows, and that's all most people care about. You can get them everywhere.
You can't, on the other hand, just walk into any ol' store and buy a Mac. My local Best Buy doesn't sell Macs. Neither does my local CompUSA. And neither do any of the (far too freakin' many) local WallyMarts. To the best of my knowledge, the only local store where I can walk in and buy a Mac, is the local Apple store.
People who want Macs have to get them from a) an Apple store, b) online, or c) an authorized Apple retailer. In general, markets who have an Apple store do not have many (if any) authorized Apple retailers, for reasons you can probably imagine. Markets with no Apple store generally have 2 local Apple authorized retailers.
This is why the Apple stores will always do better than the Gateway stores - they're filling a demand which can't be met, in brick-and-mortar terms, elsewhere.
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Based on my recent observations of friends and colleagues buying computer parts, if someone offered the same box $5 cheaper, but 2 miles FURTHER away from their local computer store, they'd still drive the extra distance to save what amounts to pocket change.
True, however you've got to admit, from the marketing prospective, there is a great advantage to rebranding... the final product has your name on it! Another major advantage, this time for the customer is tech support from a single house.
Neither is an plus. For the first, you're giving your name to a product you don't control. If a company makes great products, they're going to want to keep their name on it. The only way you'll get to rebrand something is if you drop a lot of money for something good (not up Gateway's alley) or get something inferior (more common by far). So, bully, you've just attached your name to a bad product. Now, your second "advantage", you have to support it. This crappy thing you have no control over is now taking customer service away from supporting your primary product. Disaster all around.
Like it or not, most of the people who buy from a company like Gateway are not going to drive down the street to see if the same camera costs a few bucks less, they'll buy it from Gateway or even along with their desktop or laptop and have support from the same company.
Ever been to an Apple Store? They have cameras and other stuff all over the place, they're just smart enough not to label them as Apple products.
Other than the power supplies going out, there's not much wrong with the eMachines. As a former Best Buy employee, some of my friends and I still have Linux on the first eMachines still chugging away in our dorms/basements.
They only had 2 PCI slots? 5400rpm drives? Integrated sound card?
They were only $299!!
What did you expect?
They basically created the sub-$1000 PC market. Remember what it was like before? PC, monitor, printer, you'd walk out of the store with a $2900 dent in your VISA, and all you'd have to show for it would be an IBM Aptiva or a Packard Bell.
You could buy an eMachines for $299, get a monitor and inkjet and a copy of Deer Hunter, and you still have money to buy the kids christmas presents. We'd have people drive from 80 miles away coming to buy the new cheap computers.
Another thing: Anything you see on display in an Apple Store you can take home that day. Instant gratification.
You buy from Gateway Country, and you have to wait to have it shipped. If you want instant gratification, you can go to Best Buy.
Also, people who work at Gateway Country, at least the ones I've encountered, are doing it like they'd do another retail job. Apple's stores are better because the people there care about the product they're selling. Most of them are Mac users. Also, Apple trains them to be the best.
In other words, Apple did what it does best; being the best it can, while Gateway simply rebranded.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.