Sorry Bill, your numbers just don’t add up

According to the Nielsen/Net rating market research company, consumers bought

some $6 billion worth of products online during the past holiday shopping

season. America Online said on Monday that its 26 million members spent $4.6

billion, an average of $170 per member.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced its 4 million subscribers spent $3.4 billion

online in the last three months of 2000, a whopping $875 per member. Now that

adds up to $7 billion. More than the total in online purchased from all sources.

Statistically, of course it would be impossible for MSN’s members to

outspend AOL’s 26 million users by a factor 5:1 on average. Assuming that AOL

is not over-estimating, Microsoft clearly appears to be pulling its online

economy numbers out of a hat.

That’s as far as the number game during the holiday season was concerned.

Meanwhile, PC sales have not been up to the mark during the season.

PC makers should not be so surprised. Consumers largely yawned at their

holiday specials, passing up the opportunity to buy a 1GHz PC at around $1K.

After all, the PC industry itself has been asleep at the wheel of innovation.

For much of the past 3 years, the PC industry’s idea of innovation has been to

add ever faster microprocessors, DVD drives and flat screen monitors.

But for the serious computer user, very little new productivity-enhancing

functionality has been added to the PC. No matter how fast the processor, it

still takes an eternity to boot Windows and the various applications. It seems

that more and more PC makers have given up on a market that continues to move

100 million or so machines a year. Instead, they are seeking their fortune in

such places as Web appliances and handheld devices.

Clearly, one of the greatest opportunities for PC makers lies in the personal

computer market where customers routinely plough down $1,000 to $4,000 per

machine. Here are just some ideas that come to mind in terms of what would

really add some productive and innovative value to a personal computer. Recently

sitting in the San Francisco Airport, I was unable to get any email done on a

$3,000 Gateway Solo notebook, while the guy next to me was answering dozens of

emails from this $500 handheld Casio system. Why can’t PC makers build the

kind of wireless Web access into their notebook computers?

When at home, needing to check something online, why do I have to go through

this painful 5-minute process of booting up a the entire OS, then AOL to finally

get to e-mail. I should be able to just push a button and get online instantly,

wireless if necessary, letting Windows sleep and just get online.

The same Windows by-pass surgery could be performed on a notebook so it would

not only have wireless Web access, but at very little power consumption by

leaving the power-sucking Pentium chips out of the routine. Those are just a few

examples of functions available in $400 computer devices that could easily be

added to a standard PC or notebook system. PC makers can keep the DVD. Watching

a movie on a computer is not exactly my idea of having a ball.