Georg Hniken, head of computer leaser and reseller ECS Computervertrieb Deutschland, forecasts dramatic problems in the West German market for IBM and other large personal computer makers in the second half of this year, and puts the blame squarely on the manufacturers themselves. Talking to Computerwoche, Hniken argued that dealers have been seduced with subtle marketing pressure into taking inventory with little hope of selling it in the agreed time-span. According to Hniken, the aggregate sales figures of the manufacturers in some areas considerably surpass the value of equipment actually installed on end-users’ premises. Hniken went on that IBM in particular has adopted a policy of what he calls push-programming in the last six months, so that dealer’s store rooms are brimful of blue cartons they have little hope of shifting. His reckons that IBM is set to encounter dramatic problems in the second half of the year because the dealers will simply not have enough storage space to take on more IBM product: thus, the figures for that period will be significantly down on the artificially inflated figures of the first half. What’s more, Hniken’s colleague Gilles Tugendhat, general director of Paris-based ECS International, has denounced the recently-introduced IBM PS/1 home computer as a packaging trick, and will not be reselling the machine because he considers that there is no market for it.
