The Road Ahead: PC Makers Bogged Down in the Price War

Finding bright spots in a quarter as horrid as the one personal-computer stocks have just completed isn't an easy project. Some might even call it perverse.

With the possible exception of IBM (IBM Quote), every major PC manufacturer saw sales collapse. Meanwhile, plummeting prices for PCs put profit margins, when they existed at all, under severe pressure. And none of the companies have been able to give investors even a rudimentary sense that things are improving. Last Thursday, on its earnings conference call, Hewlett-Packard (HWP Quote) tried to moderate the bad news by saying that business looked slightly better in January than in December. But an hour later, on its own call, Dell (DELL Quote) said just the opposite: Things looked even worse in the most recent month.

Earnings Scorecard
Company	Actual	Estimated*	Year-Ago
Apple	-$0.61	-$0.65**	$0.50
Compaq	$0.30	$0.28**	$0.19
Dell	$0.18	$0.19**	$0.16
Hewlett-Packard	$0.37	$0.37**	$0.40
IBM	$1.48	$1.46	$1.12
Gateway	$0.12	$0.37**	$0.38
**Lowered estimates

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