

Dell: No longer a PC company - marklabedz
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/27/us-dell-idUSTRE81Q27A20120227

======
DarkShikari
The headline is linkbait: they said they're not _just_ a PC company, they're
primarily an enterprise-oriented company. Of course, this is a given; that's
where most of the profit is.

Dell still makes money off their personal computers, but the margins are
simply way higher when selling to corporate. Personal computers have a huge
amount of competition and support is expensive.

And though iPads are probably hurting Dell somewhat, I suspect the effect is a
little different from 'people switching to tablets'. Rather, most people don't
have money to _afford_ both a new iPad and a new PC. While in the past,
upgrading ones PC every few years has often been a given, many people will
pick the iPad over the the new computer if upgrading doesn't really seem to
offer much value in comparison.

They'll keep _using_ their PC -- it's just that they're not buying a new one
from Dell.

The low-end PC market is very saturated and very low-margin; even if Dell
still has a lot of sales, they're going to talk about the thing that makes
them the most profit.

~~~
artsrc
Apple have very respectable margins on their their PC's. Apple's market share
_is_ growing.

I would like to see simple desktops hardware (like a Nintendo Wii), servers in
the cloud, and Dell to disappear into the sunset.

~~~
DarkShikari
_Apple have very respectable margins on their their PC's._

That's _because_ they don't participate in the aforementioned low-end PC
market. Dell makes respectable margins on their high-end brands (Alienware),
too.

------
beloch
My previous laptop was a Dell XPS M1330. It ran linux well, although the
fingerprint reader never worked properly for authentication outside of
Windows. Unfortunately, it was one of the many laptops from many manufacturers
that included a defective NVidia graphics chipset. Dell issued a firmware
"upgrade" that simply cranked up fan speed (making the laptop run noisier and
consume battery power quicker). They also extended the warranty slightly. My
particular laptop lasted until a week after the extension and promptly fried
itself. Arguably, if I had not dutifully installed that firmware "upgrade" it
would have burned out under warranty.

So, I knew what had happened to my laptop. The symptoms of a M1330 with a
burnt out graphics chipset were common knowledge online. I didn't feel like
buying a new laptop right then and there, so I decided to contact Dell and try
to _pay_ for a replacement part. I was routed to a call-center in India where
the employees had a set script and absolutely nothing would deter them from
following it. Even though I knew what was wrong and just wanted the part to
fix it, they told me I had to pay them $50 so they could diagnose the problem
themselves. i.e. $50 so they could move to a different section in their script
and, if it was well made, tell me what I already knew! I tried to escalate the
issue, but no luck. Dell had clearly dumped their customers on this third
party call-center and cut all backwards lines of communication.

I know other companies may be little better and this mess was really Nvidia's
fault, but I refuse to send more business to a company that I know will do
everything in their power to avoid taking care of me. They provided a hot-fix
that they knew would just barely delay failure until my laptop was off
warranty, and then they treated off-warranty service like a money-making
third-party contract.

Dell ultrabooks? No thank-you.

~~~
accountoftheday
There appeared to be an agreement among vendors that nobody would acknowledge
the existence of the Nvidia G84 issue because warranties had expired or were
close to expiration.

My in-warranty (4 years IWS turned out to be a great decision) T61p had the
same issue, and I too had in fact figured out what was wrong with it while my
Thinkpad was still under warranty, but Lenovo did not send me a replacement
notebook (newer model) until having replaced the planar _twice_ with the same
GPU, all of which that had ever been made were known to be defective.

Interestingly, the Nvidia GPU in the newer T410 I got is _much_ slower than
what was in the three years older T-series -- when it worked.

------
cryptoz
Apple better shut down, give up, and let Dell run everything. Apple doesn't
stand a chance.

<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203937.html> (1997)

~~~
otterley
In 1997, when Steve Jobs had just taken over the company from Gil Amelio,
betting against Apple seemed like a sure thing.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I use a lot of Apple gear now. I bet against them during that time too. Apple
wasn't doing well and Jobs wasn't exactly coming from a company that was a
massive success.

It wasn't until the early 2000s when I realised that myself, analysts, non-
Apple fans in general were constantly wrong.

What is most interesting, is that people still bet against Apple and bring out
the same wrong arguments year after year.

------
fumar
"A lucrative market that he said is worth $3 trillion," sounds like a nice
market to be. In the last couple of years it looked like Dell was meandering.
If the whole time they were internally focusing B2B it will pay off. I know
our company, runs entirely on Dell's systems, a high end retailer. Michael
Dell's supply chain is great. [http://en.community.dell.com/dell-
blogs/direct2dell/b/direct...](http://en.community.dell.com/dell-
blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2011/06/23/gartner-dell-tops-in-
supply-chain-for-2011.aspx)

------
nextparadigms
It looks like a classic innovator's dilemma case - moving upmarket because
they can't beat the disruptive competition at the "lower-end". I expect most
"PC leaders" to follow Dell's strategy in the next 5-10 years. Intel and
Microsoft will be forced to do the same, if nothing else because they will
still consider _them_ their customers.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
Though Apple may be impressive, I actually find Dell's complete supply chain
much much more impressive. Sure they're rough around the edges for the
"experience", but nothing a couple of expensive consultants can't fix. Maybe a
mindset change is needed though. I think with some reinventing they can pull
it off. Creating a tablet (Dell Streak), pulling back and then planning more
tablets is such a "half move"...

~~~
mbateman
Dell's supply chain is very impressive, but so is Apple's.

And user experience is "nothing a couple of expensive consultants can't fix"?
Really?

~~~
dasil003
> _And user experience is "nothing a couple of expensive consultants can't
> fix"? Really?_

If that were even remotely true then Apple wouldn't be as beloved or as
profitable as it is today.

------
jkahn
Dell servers and enterprise storage are second to none, in capability and
price. This isn't an "announcement" from Michael Dell, it's a statement of
fact: they are a major player in the enterprise IT equipment game.

If you're an IT infrastructure geek, you should check out the way their
EqualLogic storage works.

This is why companies like HP are suffering greatly: Apple is hitting into
their consumer division, and Dell is hitting into their enterprise edition
with capable solutions at a great price point.

------
chc
This headline is rather link-baity. In the context of the full quote, it's
clear that he isn't saying they're _not_ a PC company, but that they aren't
_just_ a PC company. Similarly, someone at Apple might say, "We aren't a
company that designs cool phone hardware."

~~~
toddh
>We aren't a company that designs cool phone hardware."

That's just where we make 70% of our profits :-)

------
jimbokun
Wow, Apple has beaten them so badly in the personal computing space they are
essentially ceding the market.

~~~
pedalpete
Are you sure that is who they are ceding the market to?
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/despite-record-
mac...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/despite-record-mac-
sales-70-of-apples-revenue-comes-from-ios.ars)

<http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1565>

Lenovo grew 30% to Mac 26%. Of course, Macs are growing, not ignoring that,
but they aren't the only ones.

Lenovo pays attention to design, and though they may not quite have the polish
of Apple hardware, they are getting better, and some of their designs really
are beautiful.

------
jrockway
Dell: now selling to customers that don't realize they're getting a shit
product.

(Actually, I hear Dell's servers are pretty good, and their business laptops
have treated me reasonably well. But they are no Apple when it comes to design
and polish, and it's nice that they've admitted that ripping-off Apple-
shininess is not a good business model.)

------
artsrc
> "it's an end-to-end IT company"

Maybe Amazon is an end to end IT company. You can buy your PC, and host your
application server side.

Dell don't seem end to end compared to companies that have their own database,
and operating system, etc. Oracle, Apple, and IBM all seem more end to end.

------
jakeonthemove
That's good news - Dell's (and HP's, for that matter) business machines are
simply awesome. I'll never buy a consumer laptop again - heck, the M4600 and
M6600 are faster and better looking (IMO) than the most expensive gaming
laptops - why would I ever go for the latter?

~~~
kayoone
had some dell latitudes but i wasnt really impressed by them. Build Quality
was okayish, touchpad was horrible and it had CPU whine. Much happier with my
consumer-macbook pro now.

But Dell had awesome service for business customers, if you have a problem
theres a technician the next day at your doorstep to fix the problem, that was
really awesome.

~~~
jakeonthemove
The latest Latitudes are good, but I was thinking about the Precision line -
those things are awesome...

------
idont
Dear Michael Dell, regarding your product: Why are you still putting the price
as a first argument? Do you really think you can compete against Chinese
companies? You frienemy Steve Jobs proved you there is an other path paved
with bricks of quality, value, ...

