Where Does Dell Go After Losing 3Par? 169
crimeandpunishment writes "It was the big deal Dell wanted in a big way. But now that it has lost out to Hewlett-Packard in the bidding war it started for 3Par, where does Dell go in its effort to diversify its business and move into the higher-profit area of selling technology to other companies? The company faces significant challenges, largely due to its lower-end focus, and because many of its competitors beat Dell into branching out. One analyst says, 'People see [Dell] as box-pushers'."
I really hope Dell Execs read this message (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I can speak for all the Dell customers (Score:4, Funny)
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ridiculously long lead times on core hardware
partial shipments (literally shipping servers half built because parts weren't available) complete inability to produce two systems configured the same way in a row idrac is shit. utter complete shit.
If I have to troubleshoot and bug check their hardware/firmware ONE MORE TIME, and hear from them "gee, we've never seen that before", I'm going to punch someone
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If it's anything like all their previous DRAC cards, the web interface has this awkward tendency to be so browser-specific that a relatively minor upgrade to your browser can break it, the CLI is so poorly documented they may as well just replace the user manual with a single sheet of paper that just says "Look, we just put this here to fill a line item, we don't actually expect anybody to use it".
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Much like the DRAC4 and 5 cards then. They provide a Java-based viewer to the console during boot (which I'm 90% certain is effectively a framegrabber and VNC under the hood). The only minor issue is that Dell don't seem to be able to write a half-decent interface to fire up the viewer which isn't horrendously sensitive to web browser versions.
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I have had an almost identical experience. I have been working with HP hardware my entire career but recently started a new job in a Dell shop. The last two months have been one "Doh!" moment after another. The first issue was when the battery on my Perc controller "failed" (it discharged and had to recharge). The server rebooted and failed to come up. I had the same issue happen a few years ago on an HP Smart Array controller. On the HP box, the driver just logged an error message in the event viewer
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Once you go for the 3 year NBD warranty, the price starts to look a lot less competitive. The only reason I'm buying Dell is that I have an account manager who's prepared to offer me good discounts on the list price even though we're a small business - without those discounts, I really would have trouble justifying buying their kit over any others.
pretty sure stopping demoralizing dell employees (Score:3, Insightful)
Esp. bad for Dell since the 'box is getting passe (Score:2)
They're looking so 1990s, and a 20-year old image is never good in the computer business.
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Box-pushers (Score:2)
There, fixed that for you. There's a few "caps" I'd like to put in Dell's ass, and they know the ones I mean because they have Dell's name on them already.
As far as I'm concerned... (Score:2)
Dell needs to go back to what made them great (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's put it this way:
Apple charges a lot more money for its products and they still sell a lot of them. It's not the price that makes Apple successful.
Dell built its business on customer support and service. While it's quality has more often been pretty good, it has remained more or less on par with its competitors. What makes them better is their support and service accessibility.
Sad thing is they started sending all their call centers out of the U.S. and they wonder why they started losing business? "Everyone else is doing it" was the wrong answer in the case of Dell. I remember when the change was announced. Many business customers started leaving Dell immediately before Dell did an about face on it. Still... they did it anyway... just slowly and quietly.
So, "so-so" to good quality, and a pretty decent online database for machines and a not-difficult means of getting device drivers and such.
If Dell wants to rally, they need to bring their support BACK to the U.S. That will be the only way they will be able to differentiate themselves. And if they cost a bit more, I don't think people will mind so much.
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The vast majority of people are still not technical. They learn new tricks here and there. They learn the meaning of a few buzz words. But when it comes to support, they simply need it and will pay to not have to deal with someone in a foreign nation with a difficult accent. (Hey India... wanna take over? Stop speaking Hindi!!) And seriously, people will pay a lot of money in order to not have to learn something new. This is why the geek squad is so popular with so many.
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Adamo is a good choice for small form factor and good power. Also look at any of the 13" Latitude series. I like Latitude because I can get business level warranty support options like accidental damage coverage which is REALLY important to me. I'll never forget the time, two weeks to the day after I brought my brand new Latitude D830 (maxed out in every way including the video... I love my 1920x1200!) I spilled apple juice on it. I thought I had cleaned it up well enough... it turned back on just fine.
Foreign call centers (Score:2)
While Dell has foreign call centers and they did have a rough go of it early on, it seems to me that they have that largely resolved. If you are willing to be even modestly polite (I know difficult for many Americans, always determined to prove their cultural "superiority"), you can get quick fast service. This is no longer a problem. However, with HP, you'll be luck to talk to a telephone server machine that won't send you into phone hell or simply just hang up on you, if you can even find a phone numb
They still have a chance... (Score:3, Funny)
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Not to be overly pedantic, but 3M is twice as big as Dell in terms of market cap. I have used Scotch tape to hold Dell computers together, so maybe that's a valid investment the other way around...
Not worth it (Score:3, Insightful)
3Par is not worth it, HP is just being bully and want to get rid of the HD partnership so they can push their own storage.
For Dell and their customers this is a relief as they would have burned a lot of their cash reserves, now HP have. 3Par was impressive yesterday tomorrow somebody else will show how storage should be done.
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Your probably right. The premium they paid will have HP customers picking up the slack in their profits via higher prices and poorer service for some time to come as they digest this thing. Perhaps Dell did itself a favor by bidding it up and letting HP get indigestion over the purchase. Too often takeovers are more about eliminating the competition than actually improving their business in the face of competition.
What ever happened to do one thing and do it well? (Score:2)
They're making billions as box pushers, isn't that good enough?
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No. Their shareholders demand that Dell produce an ever increasing value to the company - forever and ever. They have to get bigger or the stock value will decline and the CEO's options will not be worth enough.
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No. Their shareholders demand that Dell produce an ever increasing value to the company - forever and ever. They have to get bigger or the stock value will decline and the CEO's options will not be worth enough.
Actually many stock options are crafted in such a way that any dividends paid will be treated as notionally received by the CEO and reinvested in stock, so this is not so much of a reason. A better reason is that public companies no longer believe in paying dividends. The rationale nowadays is that you own a stock in the hope that it will go up in price so you can make money by selling it to someone else... who will presumably be buying it in the hope that further down the line they can find someone else t
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Many investors are happy to have a company that consistently pays dividends, and grows at roughly the same speed as the economy. In fact,
Re:What ever happened to do one thing and do it we (Score:5, Insightful)
They're making billions as box pushers, isn't that good enough?
If they paid dividends, maybe.
Since they don't, they are expected to grow. And grow they have not.
Technically, they've roughly doubled their revenue in the last 10 years, but their net income has been flat or declining.
If you are an investor, you have other choices in the growth game - like competitor Apple with their 10x revenue growth and corresponding net income growth. Or HP with their 3x revenue growth and significant net income growth.
They are being out-grown by their competitors. If they aren't in that game anymore, then they need to issue a dividend and compete for retiree money.
Revenue growth is hard (Score:2)
They're making billions as box pushers, isn't that good enough?
No. Every publicly traded company is expected to grow. If the Dell's market is saturated and there are limited growth opportunities there then Dell will have to find new sources of revenue outside their traditional business. This becomes VERY hard to do when a company gets as big as Dell. It gets absurdly hard when a company is as big as GE. Dell made about $50 billion in revenue last year. To grow the business by even 5% (which would be considered low) Dell would have to find $2.5 billion in new reve
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I actually used to work for a GE Medical reseller, I also know people who work for GE Aircraft Engines and for GE Appliances.
I agree with your assesment, but is it correct to compare GE to Dell?
GE is a conglomerate. They are a business of many businesses. Their corporate policy is to cut the bottom 10% every year and reinvest in something else. They are spread across many diverse markets and industries and service sectors.
Dell is an IT company. While IT is vast, it comes down to selling computer hardware, n
Law of big numbers (Score:2)
I agree with your assesment, but is it correct to compare GE to Dell?
For the point I'm making (that top line growth is very difficult for large companies) sure it's a valid point. Keeping a consistent percentage growth becomes harder the larger a company gets. This is true irrespective of the specific industry a company is involved in.
GE is a conglomerate.
Which carries it's own set of burdens. GE is run amazingly well but it's very common for the component companies of conglomerates to be worth more as independent companies. More than once the question has been asked if GE would be more valu
Dell should start with smaller potatoes. (Score:2)
Sorry SuperMicro, but you could use a bigger umbrella.
So, Dell: Buy SuperMicro
Also, Dell, you need to make some serious inroads in the backend service arena. There are several dozen cloud service and storage business starting up every week. Buy two or three of each. Three billion Dollars should go pretty far in this arena.
Split the software and services from the hardware. While you're at it, buy or invest heavily in implementation and sales engineer forces.
Once all the divisions are established, take so
Out of curiosity... (Score:3, Insightful)
The former seems like a largely perceptual problem. Earth to investors, not every industry segment can double its profit every quarter forever, and if it can, it is probably a scam. Civilizations are built on largely low-margin commodities. Cement, steel, sulfuric acid, corn, potatoes, x86s. Go find a Ponzi scheme if you can't deal with that.
The latter, though, seems like a real issue for Dell, one that could seriously impact their mid to long-term viability.
Wall street has no problem with low margin ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is no longer capable of satisfying the bloated expectations of parasitic wall-streeters because it basically just produces an unsexy commodity in quantity, like steel or potatoes.
Wall street has no problem with low margin commodity type companies. They just expect them to describe themselves as one and to act like one, not to pretend that they are still a growth company when all that differentiated them has come to pass.
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"Is no longer capable of satisfying the bloated expectations of parasitic wall-streeters because it basically just produces an unsexy commodity in quantity, like steel or potatoes"
Actually, many investors are perfectly happy with companies that just continue to do something simple, well. Dell is losing its allure because their service has begun to suck balls, they've forgotten what the business is about, they treat customers badly and with contempt, and provide poor service with the attitude that customer
Where? Fuck everything! (Score:5, Funny)
I Like Dell (Score:4, Funny)
I buy Dell computers from the refurb market. They are cheap and plentiful. I love 'em! I have nearly 150 small form-factor systems and laptops. Because of the indecently low cost I get them, I keep spares on the shelf. I don't fix them, I just swap the HD to another box. The parts are easy to swap in and out and I have experienced a high level of up-time with all of my systems. GX150 were the first systems, then up to GX260/270/280. Now that those systems are leaving the refurb market, moving up to the GX520/620. There is nothing wrong with being a box-pusher. Someone has to make the boxes and that I will eventually buy off refurb.
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Nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM (Score:2)
But for buying Dell? You'd might as well start cleaning out your desk before you hit the order button.
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They must be doing something right. The colocation center where we have our Sun boxes hosted is about 80% populated with Dell rackmounts.
Where's the niche? (Score:2)
R&D the D does not stand for Dell (Score:2)
To create new products and innovate in markets you need Research and Development. You can't be a me-to follow on that wins with low manufacturing costs. R&D requires a different mindset and a whole new way of planning. It means risk taking but balancing the risk carefully with planing and strategy to correctly evaluate and drop things that are not going to work as well as properly spend on the high quality part where it is needed.
You can purchase R&D (Score:2)
To create new products and innovate in markets you need Research and Development.
You don't have to have in house R&D but if you don't you do need the cash to buy companies that do R&D. Cisco is actually a good example. They do some internal R&D but they acquire a lot of companies specifically for the products they develop. R&D doesn't have to be in house but if it isn't the company will have to acquire it. Dell has $10 billion in cash so they should be able to acquire technology. However Dell doesn't have a ton of in house expertise in M&A activity either (merge
To Disneyland? (Score:2)
I believe they go into a room and high five each other, cause they just conned HP into paying an absurd amount of money for something they didn't really need.
3PAR wasn't the only option out there (Score:2)
Slow train full of pain arrives after years. (Score:3, Interesting)
Dell always was a low cost knock-off product. They were never innovators, and never developed a real R&D function in their company. They basically sold the same thing as the other guy, except for less money. The difference is that HP, IBM, and for a while, Compaq would create products that Dell did no have at all (there was a time where you could get servers from IBM, Compaq and HP, but not from Dell). Dell would wait until the component manufacturers would have the commodity parts (depending on market size that would be weeks, months or a year or so) , and then would bring a less expensive machine to market. For desktops, since Intel provided chipsets and reference boards, there was no lag, and often Dell was quicker than others to put the latest CPU in a desktop. HP, IBM and Compaq had to finance building machines in advance and shipping them to resellers. Dell would take orders this week, and make and ship the PCs next week. This practice worked in Dell's favor as components would drop in price, allowing them to lower prices faster than their "channel bound" competitors.
Ironically, the last of the big 80s and 90s PC makers is Apple, who has continued to invest in R&D, still has a big channel (even though they have retail stores) and is using their ability to create new products (iStuff) and/or superior products (Mac) to extract very healthy profit margins from a recession market. Dell wants some profit, but is stuck being the low cost leader and doesn't have the internal resources to fix the problem, and their friends in Redmond aren't exactly producing the electrifying new software that makes people want a new PC.
Look at the other two comparable companies: (Score:2)
Give the cash to Equallogic (Score:2)
How about taking the $1,500,000,000 they were going to give 3Par shareholders (to get 3Par and 350m cash) and give it to Equallogic engineers instead to design a 3Par competitor. Maybe tout for a few Google hardware people and wait out their non-compete but keep Equallogic in its current arms-length form to prevent Dellification of the final product. Why not boost R&D in the US rather than giving venture capitalists a pay day.
It's one thing when you don't have the cash or engineers to roll your own.
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This is not a bad idea, but Equallogic doesn't really have product offerings at the level. They might be able to, eventually, but it would take time to do and more time to build the reputation/
That said, commoditization of storage may make 3PAR et al irrelevant. It's getting progressively more difficult to justify the cost of first-tier stuff when Equallogic et al give you almost as much performance and reliability for a hell of a lot less money. You have to really need the features the more advanced arr
Is this whole article and discussion by HP? (Score:2)
Not to mention Fiorina (Score:2)
HP built the platform to put that idiot in the United States Senate, as if that body didn't have enough problems.
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Second I voted for Chuck Devore in the primary
Third, I do know her voting record and her public policy stance and just her support of abortion through the spread of lies makes my stomach turn.
Freakonomics did a study that said that the reason people who raise more money win is because they have more supporters. However starting with lots of money doesn't affect the outcome.
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"the reason people who raise more money win is because they have more supporters".
The reason people with more money wins is that most voters vote for the person they saw in the last commercial they watched. Americans have become programmed by commercialism. How else could you explain why so many American's spend 100-200 dollars/month just to spend half their time watching commercials. If that weren't true ALL sides wouldn't spend so much time and effort falling all over themselves to get money to run com
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Don't you find it ironic that while everyone else you accuse is complaining about customer service issues and the like, you bring up a long list of factors that almost no one except spectators and speculators actually care about?
Trying to push Cisco out? Forced out their CEO? Strange reseller practices? Unless they are in danger of going out of business, most customers couldn't care less. Customer service, quality, reliability, longevity, device drivers, support, service information, replacement part avai
Not only Dell ... (Score:3, Insightful)
One analyst says, 'People see [Dell] as box-pushers'.
Those of us who have been engineers for a while are disheartened to see Hewlett-Packard in the same light.. Dell has always been Dell, but HP was once truly a company worthy of respect.
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The higher end HP stuff seems to be pretty good. Not as good as it used to be, but certainly respectable. It is the "consumer" grade stuff that is worthless.
I like to blame all that on the merger with Compaq, which had a reputation for putting out really bad entry level hardware in the early 90s, but I don't know who there is really responsible for polluting a respectable brand with self destructing consumer equipment.
Brocade (Score:2)
Formula for Success (Score:2)
3PAR. This was supposed to be Dell's answer for being SUB-PAR.
There is nothing wrong with being a box-pusher (Score:2)
Just be a really good box-pusher.
Re:how about out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, where have I heard that one before?
Maybe they'll get lucky and invent the next great... um... portable music player? No, that didn't work... PDA? No, that worked, but the market disappeared into smartphones... Smartphone? No, beat to the punch 4 or 5 times over... Printers? Tablets? TVs? No, no, and no.
Dell's problem isn't that competitors beat it into branching out. Dell's tried branching out tons of times. Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets. And even the things that went well were crippled by bad design, bad materials, or just blame bad timing. (For instance, their multi-function displays are nice... but who wants to carry around a multi-function display with their laptop?)
Re:how about out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets.
As I see it, they either need to embrace their role as a builder of boxes and switch to a dividend rather than growth company - or they need to stop selling low-margin shit. How much do they make on a $400 laptop? Why do that to themselves? If they are afraid that their store will not be a "one stop shop", then make the store a separate corporation and sell cheap shit from other companies - only put the "Dell" badge on high-margin - and preferably high-quality - merchandise.
Dell no longer has edge in PCs ... (Score:2)
Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets.
As I see it, they either need to embrace their role as a builder of boxes ...
Dell's problem is that the novel and leading practices that they pioneered are now standard practices. They no longer have the manufacturing, assembly and distribution advantages they once had. This is one of the reasons they have been so eager to grow into new markets with new products.
Also prices have collapsed since Dell's glory days. Even with higher quality corporate oriented products Dell would still merely be selling "commodity" products at a low margin. Not commodity as in cheap stuff but com
But they do have one thing going for them (Score:3, Informative)
They are very good at supporting their customers when things go wrong. I have purchased a number of Dell computers and have had excellent service with them over the years, particularly when I've had hardware failures. They attend to them courteously and promptly.
HP on the other hand does not support its products. I purchased a very expensive color laser printer from them just a few years ago, but when Windows 7 came out and I upgraded from XP, I discovered they refused to make a new driver for this prin
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Re:how about out of business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the problem: Wall Street doesn't like companies that make a profit and pay a dividend. In today's upside-down growth-obsessed "free market", it doesn't really matter what companies make or sell. The only thing that matters is the accumulation of cash so they can buy other companies. There are even bidding wars in leveraged buyouts. Think about that for a second. And a Department of Justice that has never met a merger or takeover they didn't like.
Apple has 40 billion in cash. Stock price is in the stratosphere. P/E of 19.23(ttm). They still don't pay dividends.
We've got companies who are trading at 3 times earnings, booking huge profits and still not paying a dividend. Then we've got companies trading at 25 times earnings, booking huge profits, and still not paying dividends. Companies aren't using that cash to start new projects, or build new plants or hire people or pay dividends. They're just accumulating. If they did pay dividends, it would mean some of that cash that's sitting in corporate mattresses would actually end up in the economy. But that's too "long-term" of a play for the captains of industry There are actually companies whose capitalization is less than their cash on hand. So they're capitalization is 30 billion and their cash on hand is 35 billion. They get taken over and the new buyers realize a 5 billion gain before the ink is dry on the sales contract. Paying dividends has become a signal that you're not "growth oriented" enough, that you're not "aggressive" enough. In other words, that you're paying attention to your core business instead of looking to buy or merge with your competitors and suppliers.
Short term thinking and "free market" fantasies have mutated big business into something that only benefits the number of people you can fit around a conference table. Profits are up, but for most working people, income and quality of life are down. How long you think that's going to last, and what will our society look like after another decade of that trend?
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Don't you think you've steered away from the topic a bit? :)
Profits are up, but for most working people, income and quality of life are down.
I hear this a lot, but I don't buy the argument. By what measure is quality of life down? Compared to when? Sure, we spend more of our income on health care - but we get a lot more, too. Life expectancy has steadily increased over the years. Cancers are often not terminal anymore. AIDS is a chronic condition rather than a death sentence. In the mid 80s we were astounded by open-heart surgery - now it's often an outpatient procedure.
Cars are more ex
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By family income and wealth. Compared to before 1980.
The cost of things at Wal-Mart doesn't really have any impact on quality of life. In fact, you could say that the lower the cost of things at Wal-Mart, the lower the quality of life.
There's no question that we are worse off than previous generations, whether or not you "reign in"(sic) Wall Street.
In 1956, a single breadwinner, earning the average wage, could expect to put a couple of kids throug
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By family income and wealth. Compared to before 1980.
How do you arrive at your definition of income and wealth? Income has to be adjusted for inflation - which usually includes things like energy and health care. Energy is at least twice as expensive as it was in the '50s. Health care is many times as expensive. In both cases, it's not a fair comparison. Even the cheapest cars get many times the mileage as a '50s car, making gas prices a wash. And '50s health care was limited to antibiotics, mended bones, and minor surgeries. State of the art was the boom of
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Yes, but the average American family owned more of that smaller house. A lot more. Great, you've got a huge McMansion and a jumbo mortgage you'll never pay off. People in the '50s and '60s and '70s actually used to have "mortgage burning" parties. I was there when my Dad and Mom burned theirs. Today, you have foreclosures and people walking away from their underwater mortgages.
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I know I'm going to get a "Slashdot is a US site, yadda yadda yadda..." for this, but all the same.
My parents, here in the UK, got married about 3 decades ago, both of them quite young. Neither of them were in great jobs, but they bought good sized 3 bedroom house in the suburbs on mortgage, which they payed off entirely in 20 years. Their house is now worth 5x as much as when they bought it. University education at this point was also free.
Me and my girlfriend are now about the same age as that, and we are
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Here's the problem: Wall Street doesn't like companies that make a profit and pay a dividend.
Sorry, but you're completely wrong. Hint: "Wall Street" is not one entity: it's millions of investors. Lots of them want/need income instead of growth. With a little googling, you can discover dozens of multi-billion-dollar retirement funds that invest in income stocks instead of growth stocks. You can also discover millions of individual investors who want tax-free dividend income over taxable capital gains. Hot growth stocks will always have higher P/Es than income stocks but it's been that way for 1
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I'm specifically talking about the cash on hand. It's really nice of Apple to let people buy stock which allows them to be in business, but at 20 times earnings, there's a very good chance the stock won't be high for long. Those shareholders are paying for their risk.
Remember, the stock market does not go only one way.
Cash on hand is a whole 'nother story.
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I'm specifically talking about the cash on hand.
You are missing his point. "Cash on hand" is not actually cash, but a mixture of cash and short-term investments. Even the "cash" is actually just a balance in a bank account, which obviously is re-invested by the bank.
Pick a strategy (Score:2)
How much do they make on a $400 laptop? Why do that to themselves?
Low margins can be fine if you have the volume to support them. Dell has annual revenue of $50 billion and net income of about $1.5 billion. That's about a 3% profit margin which is pretty good for a manufacturing company. Their gross margins are about 17% which is in the range of normal for a large manufacturing concern. Walmart does just fine with low margins but they have no illusions about moving into higher revenue products. Dell has been very good at being a low cost manufacturer and they should b
State of Dell (Score:5, Interesting)
1.They have little long term vision, but are instead obsessed with making the goals for the next reporting period.
2. The "executives" are a series of "wonder boys" that come in, discard everything that wasn't their doing, and re-invent the wheel with their brand on it. They usually are there long enough to screw things up and then get picked up by another company.
3. Middle management has a siege mentality, never knowing when one of these "wonder boy" executives is going to come in and fire them, replacing them with their buddies.
4. The actual workers spend a lot of time wondering what the hell is going on and who is in charge this week.
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Mod parent up.
The revolving door effect is huge. Consistency isn't one of their passions, it's an accident. Yet they survive because part of their model changed the entire industry: slaughtering channel by cutting out the middleman/distributor/retailer. If tehy can get better product selection and wean themselves from Microsoft and Intel co-op bribes/funds, they'll be able to make more rational decisions, instead of ones that are made for them.
Mark me flamebait if you want, but Dell's core engine is great--
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OTOH, their inspiron crap goes wonky if you even look at it funny. Hard to believe that the same company produced both laptops.
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Probably when Michael Dell said it about Apple [cnet.com].
Isn't it funny when people start suggesting that you take your own advice?
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mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down
Dell's bread and butter was that each computer was special built per customer specifications. That got dropped a little after Micheal retired and that is when the company started going down. They started to copy Compaq, which was the worst thing they could do.
When I worked at Dell in shipping the head of logistics forwarded on the following editorial.
http://www.forbes.com/1999/04/21/feat2.html [forbes.com]
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Why doesn't "standardization and volume to bring costs down" work with the new "electronics markets"?
I didn't realize the successful companies were doing well because they were hand-building their products to order.
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Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets
Dell was always an "assembler" and not a "manufacturer" of computers. Today's products need a manufacturer as they are not a chassis with plug in components.
I don't think Dell is dead, or has no chance in the future, because they have money and market share. That's not a forever thing, though. Dell needs to change how they approach creati
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Dell should sell a line of dirt cheap android phones direct to the consumer. Don't lock them down. Let the user install their own OS if they want. Go for quantity. This would work outside the USA where GSM dominates as a standard.
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"Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets"
No, Dell's problem is that they've simply stopped doing their founding business model well. For example, simply ordering a laptop from them online can and easily does take weeks to months (literally, I do not exaggerate) to deliver. Secondly, their system is so ball-sucky that you cannot, I kid you not, even do something simple like chan
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No. What's going to happen is a merger between Dell and HP. One fewer PC manufacturer. 5000 people laid off. There will be a bidding war, which will drive up the stock price and make a bunch of traders rich. Big bonuses for the CEO (and for the lawyers who handle the merger.
Customers suffer.
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What's going to happen is a merger between Dell and HP
I suspect such a merger might have a difficult time getting approved due to anti-trust considerations.
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You're joking, right? Do you know how many mergers the DOJ has blocked in the past ten years?
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I don't see a Dell-EMC merger. The companies are just too different. And as an EMC employee, I wouldn't be happy about it.
As to the partnership, yes, Dell resells EMC products. In trying to buy 3Par, they've shown another indication that they would rather be selling their own stuff than reselling someone else's, which may have some implications for the long-term stability of the partnership.
Dave Donatelli (HP) buying 3Par looks good for EMC. It suggests that HP may stop reselling Hitachi storage in favo
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instead, you'll strugle with HP's crap. those are getting as bad as everybody else's.
IBM won't buy them. IBM wants nothing to do with the same PCs they invented nearly 30 years ago, that's why they sold the PC business to lenovo. found out that their market is with corporations, not consumers. when the largest buyers of printers, PCs and notebooks became end-users (instead of their bosses), they jumped ship. and i don't blame them.
i just got out of linuxcon brasil, and i saw an idea there that could save de
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I disagree with your conclusion--TV manufacturers are already building similar devices into the TVs themselves, and this is just going to become more and more common. No way the suggestion above would be a win for Dell.
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HP actually made their own CPUs PA-RISC which they made up till 2008. They worked with Intel on the Itantium and seem to be the only people that can make money selling them.
IBM well IBM is IBM. They have have made more different CPUs than you can shake a stick at.
Dell takes parts and puts them in a box. Kind of like a mom and pop computer store.
Dell doesn't make crap and we have one of there server boxes in our rack. It works very well but we could have gone to newegg and put together something just as imp
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Dell takes parts and puts them in a box.
Somewhere there ought to be a place for HP or Dell or both to get out of the race to the bottom and actually produce high quality hardware with first class customer service, at a price ~30-40% above what the no-service no-name brand of the day charges.
Telephone support I could live without. But both HP and Dell's websites make me ill. There seems to be a problem out there where as soon as marketing gets in charge of a web site they water it down, take all the useful
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Yes it is a little bit confusing. You may want to Google for "quickspecs" + the HP model you're interested.
"quickspecs 8440w"
Most times I try it the first one links would be the HTML version. In the above example, the first link unfortunately is the PDF version and you don't get the HTML version unless you click on the 4th one, and that is its overview page.
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I'm sorry, but I have not seen even a glimmer of this from Dell. Just look at all of the people complaining about the vendor lock-in that their H700 controllers impose. You cannot use any third-party drives, you must use the Dell rebranded drives (that are really the same product just with a label change) at a significant markup. I will not buy any server that does this nonsense, and I would not recommend Dell to any custormer. Vendors that treat their customers like they are stupid deserves to go out of bu
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