March 8th, 2000

[10:00 AM] Compaq Dethrones Apple To Claim #1 Web Site by Staff After three weeks in a row in the number one position in PC Data's Top 10 Hardware Sites list, Apple was dethroned by Compaq for the week ending 3/04/2000. Compaq moved ahead two places from 3rd to 1st with 23.5% more traffic than Apple. Other than Compaq, all 9 other Top 10 sites saw a general decrease in traffic when compared to the previous week. Apple's challenger from last week, Egghead.com, fell back considerably. According to PC Data: This Week Last Week Hardware Sites % of Total Web Audience Reached Unique Users (000) 1. 3. compaq.com 2.1% 1,123 2. 1. apple.com 1.7% 909 3. 2. egghead.com 1.4% 757 4. 4. hp.com 1.3% 697 5. 5. gateway.com 1.2% 625 6. 6. dell.com 1.0% 536 7. 7. ecost.com 0.8% 436 8. 9. outpost.com 0.7% 364 9. 8. ibm.com 0.6% 323 10. 10. Intel.com 0.5% 276 The Mac Observer Spin: Apple held tough in that number one spot, but this is still a good showing for the company's Internet strategy (also known as iTools). More importantly, Apple is showing some fairly consistent numbers in these statistics as far as total visitors go. As we have said in our other coverage on this subject, visitors to Apple's web site represent mindshare for the company. Apple