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Troubled Times at Gateway
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at the future of Gateway in the light of the recent announcement of the departure of their CEO. The article revolves around the question: 'Will the sudden departure of Wayne Inouye and a slumping stock price leave the computer maker open to a buyout or takeover?'"
But uh. Gateways have always sucked. So uh... suprise? Gateway has failed to do anything special for years, so simply being around in the 'make a crappy PC, set a low price, sell by the millions' game isnt enough. Remember Packard Bell?
Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he were the CEO of Gateway:
"I'd butcher the cow and have a barbecque for the shareholders."
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Question: Does Apple do anything innovative? Does OS X count as "innovative"?
Apple is top ten; it's actually sixth in U.S. marketshare, IIRC.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Can Wayne Inouye Save Gateway? ... Apparently not.
Gateway's profit after deducting Microsoft's payoff was only $9M.
They paid the CEO $19 and bonuses for one year's work before he bails.
But, probably the real reason why he couldn't make a go of it at Gateway was inteference from Snyder and the rest of the board.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Apple doesn't innovate, but they bring innovations to consumers in a form they can actually use.
English is easier said than done.
Over the past 15-20 years I've known many Gateway customers. Tech-savvy users, grandmas, University departments, small businesses, all have one thing in common: every single person or group I've ever known to have bought a Gateway PC has had to call their tech support line about something.
How do I know this? After the first two or three, I started to ask: "How was their tech support?" They'd usually answer matter-of-factly, "Oh, they were great. There was this little problem, but they helped me fix it right away."
Sometimes they'd say no, and I'd ask, "Really? You're the first." Then they'd respond with "Oh, well, now that you mention it, there was this problem with the [memory, hard disk, keyboard, missing item, whatever], but they helped me fix it right away."
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Apple gets a reasonable amount of patents, so I suppose they are innovative, but it is hard to tell in a world of obvious patents.
How many patents do Dell, HP, Gateway, etc, get?
Apple tend to innovate more at the package level than the component level. They might make products that other people have done before, but they make the whole package palatable to the purchaser, and thus desirable. They make it look good, work simply and easily, and these are things that PC makers are going to have trouble with as they don't have their own software stack incorporating an OS up through high end applications.
And they do these things with rapid speed. Another respondent says it is just a nicely packaged nano-ITX system. Problem is, nano-ITX is barely available a year after the Mini was released. I think he meant mini-ITX, although the mini's motherboard is smaller than that. Again, the mini is more integrated and more powerful (I guess a 1.5GHz G4 is twice as powerful as a 1.2GHz C3, and that's before SIMD).
That's hardly true. Gateway's got the most innovative website I've ever seen. Rarely does navigating a site equate to taking a Mensa IQ test. Every other OEM has relatively easy support pages, but Gateway takes the high road, demanding that you improve yourself in order solve whatever problem you may have. Dell, Apple, etc... all represent a "dumbing down" user experience, while Gateway is helping us help ourselves. After all, the smarter we become using their site, the less we will have to use their site at all. This must be working, because after using the site to find drivers, I've given up and vow never to return.