De traditionele rivalen HP en Compaq hebben hun strijdbijltjes begraven (tenminste, voor even). Samen met een heel stel andere bedrijven waaronder AMD, NEC, Samsung Electronics en Quantum richten zij een internetbedrijf op dat alle leden moet kunnen voorzien van high-tech hardware. Het idee is gewoon één grote ruilmarkt voor de bedrijven die meedoen, en dat zijn er op dit moment 12. Dit alles natuurlijk om de kosten op inkoopkosten te besparen.
Potentially, the high-tech exchange for commodity components could facilitate more than $600 billion in orders over the next few years, making it one of the largest exchanges on the Web.
Many of the components used in high-tech devices, such as memory and disk drives, are virtually identical.
By creating a single source for many of these components, manufacturers could save between 5 percent and 7 percent off their purchasing costs.
The still unnamed company is expected to be operating within three months, Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said last week. Fiorina also said the group is looking for another eight companies to become founding members of the on-line market site, which would increase the initial capitalization for the company to $100 million.