Let's say you're a formerly-beleaguered multi-billion-dollar computer company who's recently gotten back on its feet. Suppose, too, that one of the measures you took to improve your fairly dire situation was to cut all your national retailers except for a single chain of computer superstores. Now what would happen if this single retailer, who is the only national chain that sells your biggest-ticket machines, suddenly decided that it didn't want to sell computers anymore? Well, don't sprain your brain thinking too hard, because if you just sit back and wait, the answer will play itself out for you.

See, faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri pointed out a Reuters story about CompUSA's recent announcements regarding its upcoming reorganization. CompUSA, it seems, may have caught whatever bug it was that Apple had a few years back, because they seem to have been in a steady decline for a while now. And the most recent measures they're taking to cut costs and reverse their negative financial trend sound pretty logical, for the most part-- closing some stores, cutting a slew of jobs, etc.-- but the most notable change strikes us as, well, a little bizarre. According to the article, CompUSA claims "it will now focus on a broad range of new digital consumer technologies like DVD and personal digital assistants." Consumer technologies? Sounds like CompUSA wants to be Best Buy.

So what does CompUSA's implied de-emphasis on selling desktop computer systems mean for Apple? Sure, Sears has signed on as a national reseller, but only for consumer systems like the iMac and whatever the P1 turns out to be. If CompUSA ceases to sell Power Macs and PowerBooks (remember, that's not necessarily the case yet), then customers who want those "professional" machines will have to shop at local and regional resellers, or go the mail order route. That's not necessarily a huge problem, since it's the first-time buyers that really need to see Apple products on the shelf, and Sears ought to take care of that with the consumer products; people who need more than an iMac will hopefully be savvy enough to turn to smaller dealers or mail order houses. Still, we're a little wigged out by the concept of a CompUSA that doesn't want to sell computers. What's next, a FootLocker that wants to de-emphasize athletic shoes?