IDC's Pricing Evaluation Service: Personal Computing product provides personal computing vendors and resellers with the intelligence and analysis necessary to create winning price and product positioning strategies. Clients can access real-time pricing and specifications through IDC's Pricing eValuator Web site. Clients also receive detailed analyses on current and future price trends and access to robust analysis tools.

This product covers the following segments of the personal computing market:

• Personal computers
• Notebooks
• PC components
• PC servers
• MP3 players
• Video/sound devices
• Memory
• Displays
• Projectors
• Accessories

Throughout the year, this product will address the following topics:

• Impact of pricing on emerging distribution channels
• Declining reseller and vendor margins
• Opportunities in a maturing market
• Winners and losers in the protracted PC price war
• Multiple sources of components fueling a supplier price war
• Effect of stockpiling PCs on prices
• Emerging pricing trends in corporate procurement

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

1. How do component costs affect overall system prices and vendor selling strategies?
2. What are the defining issues and predictors of pricing over the next year?
3. What effect will direct channel players have on the various market segments?
4. Which vendors initiate/dominate price leadership in the marketplace?
5. How do technology changes affect the procurement decisions of major corporate buyers?

IDC's Pricing Evaluation Service: Personal Computing product analyzes the product strategies, competitive positioning, financial viability, and overall strategic direction of major providers in the personal computing market in the United States, Canada, most European countries, and many countries in Asia. Companies tracked include Acer, Apple, Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Lenovo, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba.

Internet access to data and analysis tools is provided via IDC's Pricing eValuator Web site. The tools and services available to clients include the following:

• Price and specifications database includes street-, Web-, eretailer-, and distributor-level pricing as well as specifications, historical pricing, and product availability information.
• PC Normalizer tool allows users to build detailed model-to-model comparisons of one product line against another, neutralizing feature-set differences and highlighting which product line has the price advantage.
• IDC updates detail price and promotion changes and new product announcements as they happen, emphasizing fast delivery of pricing data so clients can react rapidly.
• Product comparison builder tool matches clients' products with peer products from competitors and updates pricing and differences on a daily basis.
• Custom consulting is available for special projects.

As a privately held company, IDC believes that our customers are our primary constituency. A large percentage of every revenue dollar is reinvested back into our products, including more analysts, more geographic coverage, and extensive primary research.

Our steady growth over the past 10-plus years reflects our commitment to investing in our customers.