Dell: Subprime- vs. Sub[...]-casualty

Recently we've become familiar with the growing waves of pain on Wall Street. However, few should have expected more pain on at Dell after its founder returned to the company about a year ago. From NYTimes Bits we learn:
Dell on Monday announced that it plans to close a desktop computer manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas. The company said the closure is part of a massive reorganization effort to revive Dell while also cutting $3 billion in costs.
Dell's misfortune (being a one-trick shop) has been amplified by Microsoft's Vista non-event. Indeed, its exclusive reliance on an optimized supply chain and Wintel has consistently made for cheap products and increasing vulnerability to Vista-type of events. When Microsoft failed to give corporations a timely reason for an upgrade, Dell was found poorly prepared to capitalize on the consumer market.

As a side note, it's interesting to see how Michael Dell's second coming wasn't that much of a comeback since Dell had always been a Dell-Rollins show. On the other hand, Mr. Dell himself believed it was a comeback since he spent quite a chunk of his own money to buy shares in the company.

-more on the subject-

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dell, as well as lots of other companies, are missing big time. What happened to those times when a company actually tested their products and ask the users what they care about the most?

Take the notebooks market for example. There are so many variations out there, most of them with Vista or XP. But none of them, except Apple perhaps, tauts things that matter to most users: startup time, lack of crapware, good quality sound, mic and cam incorporated... I understand is expensive to build a system that does not break if you drive a car over it, but what about spilling some coffee onto the keyboard? Spilling drinks should not break a $1500 system.

I know, the speed of processors improved, hard drives are half a terrabyte by now, however the mainstream laptop designs have not advanced since 1995! Where is the innovation people?

Enough blabbering, my two cent is over.