Tuesday, 26 January 2016

We'll never give up on PCs says Dell

Dell is still serious about being a big player as a PC vendor, despite the company's recent diversification as seen in moves such as the colossal acquisition of EMC.

When Dell announced it had snagged cloud giant EMC for the staggering sum of $67 billion (around £47 billion, AU$96 billion), last October Michael Dell told the world that the company's new philosophy was "go big or go home", and that it was set to become an enterprise solutions powerhouse.

Last autumn, Dell did also stress it was still committed to the PC industry, and now an executive has come forward to underline that commitment in an interview with CRN.

Jeffrey Clarke, who is Vice Chairman, Operations, and President, Client Solutions at Dell, was asked by CRN whether Dell still cares about the PC – to which his simple reply was: "Hell, yeah!"

When asked about Dell's path to becoming an enterprise powerhouse and how important PCs are in the context of this goal, Clarke replied: "Dell is becoming an end-to-end service provider. The client [PC] is an essential part of Dell's larger ecosystem … As Michael [Dell] often reminds [us], you can't be an end-to-end enterprise company without both ends."

The exec noted that Dell also fully intends to maintain its position in the top three PC vendors globally – according to IDC's figures from a fortnight ago, Dell is in third place (with a 14.1% market share) behind HP and Lenovo.

Market domination

Clarke noted that currently these top three PC manufacturers hold around 54% of the market between them, and that this stranglehold will increase substantially in the future.

He said: "Sony quit. Toshiba's PC business is on the ropes. Acer is down 25% last quarter. Samsung is getting out of the PC market. Who is left?

"Michael [Dell] says in the next five to seven years, 80% of global PC sales will be driven by three PC makers. Dell will be one of them."

One firm he didn't mention was Apple, which is making considerable progress with its Macs running against the grain of the overall major PC slump which has hit the industry. Cupertino currently holds 8% of the market.

At any rate, we get the picture – Dell certainly won't be letting up when it comes to its desktop computers and laptops. And that's good to hear, because the firm makes some pretty neat machines.

Via: WinBeta