Corel and other latecomers to the Linux ball

["Trainor, Kevin T." <Kevin.T.Trainor@norwest.com>]

Nick Reinking wrote:
>Last I checked, SGI's stock was at 6 1/2 - down from 40, which it was
>at just five years ago. 
	Leaving aside the question of whether a company's stock price 
truly reflects its actual worth (and especially with the new crop of 
Linux IPOs, there's a strong argument to the contrary) SGI is going
from being a niche-market boxmaker into being a boxmaker who also
sells software and support. Sort of like IBM, though I have my doubts
as to whether SGI will actually pull it off. I sold my stock when it
was ~$10, so that should tell you something even if the purchase price 
was ~$12.

>IBM isn't desperate - but that's because they
>are the biggest service/support agency in the world, and people think of
>IBM when they think of service and support.
	This is not widely known outside the IT field, Nick. Maybe IT
people think service and support, but Joe Sixpack the Windows user
thinks about PCs and maybe mainframes when IBM comes up in the 
conversation.

>I don't know anybody (at least
>at SUPERVALU, 99 on Fortune 500) that thinks "LinuxCare" when it comes to
>support.  IBM made a lot of money selling _products_ for a long time (they
>still do), and just recently have they really started transitioning into
>a services company.  I don't think that IBM makes any money from selling
>AIX - they make money selling big mainframes and supporting them (and
that's
>because there aren't many that support IBM mainframes).  
	Somebody else made the point that most of Big Blue's revenues 
have always come from service contracts on their own machines, which
have always been pricy, so I won't beat that particular dead horse
further.

>Corel, as you noted, is definitely desperate.
	I disagree completely with this. I've been a CORL shareholder for
a couple of years now, and they are a long way from "desperate". 
Desperate is a natural gas company who bought hundreds of new wells
a few years back just before the price of NG went through the floor.
Desperate is a coal company selling off mines for zero dollars so that
they'll be free of the reclamation costs and associated pension/medical
costs for the miners formerly working there. Corel has a new product line
that is selling well, a very popular Linux distribution with an 
established office productivity package, and no real competition in the
Linux desktop apps area except for Sun and maybe Applix...neither of 
whose products are as well-known as Corel's Wordperfect Office.
	This is not to say that Corel doesn't have problems. I severely
doubt that Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer lose much (if any) sleep over
the threat posed to their market share by Corel, but I can see Corel
getting it's act together, exploiting its entree to the community of
Linux users they've created, and becoming a reasonably steady, 
profitable concern over the next decade or two.

>Apple is not that desperate anymore, and they
>haven't embraced OSS for much (maybe when I see the source to Quicktime,
eh?).
	Don't hold your breath. Apple has always struck me as being at
the opposite end of the spectrum from the OSS movement.

>VA isn't desperate, but I'm noting that their stock is at 50 - down from
>320. 
	See my comments above on stock price v. valuation. Are you saying 
that VA was actually worth $320 a share while Wells Fargo was only worth
~$45 and Supervalu was worth ~$20? I don't believe that, and that's why
I don't pay much attention to the stock price when it comes time to look
over what's out there and decide where to invest my money. That's what 
the 10-K and 10-Q's are for, to say nothing of the rest fo the financials.

Kevin Trainor
"Some people like to go out dancing
But other people like us, well we gotta work."
	--Lou Reed, "Sweet Jane"

...all opinions my own, not Norwest's or Wells Fargo's.