PC industry needs to ‘consolidate or die’

The PC industry will remain an unattractive investment segment, unless there's some serious consolidation, according to Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff.

And boy, does he mean serious consolidation. Among the suggestions contained in his provocative 'manifesto', are that:

• IBM sells its PC business to Compaq or Dell and cut a services deal.
  
• Dell should buy IBM's PC business and Gateway to 'increase share, its presence abroad and strengthen its consumer operations'.
  
• Gateway should sell out - maybe to a big Japanese player - or retrench operations (or Dell, see above).
  
• Compaq should sell its PC business to Hewlett-Packard.
  
• Apple should port over to Wintel and concentrate on playing to its strengths.

Makes sense? Other analysts don't think so. For a start, how can IBM sell its PC business to Compaq if Compaq is selling

PC business to HP? Hit the

and see other examples. ®