Dude, You’re Not Getting a Dell
December 16th, 2012 - 3:02 pm
Dell is out of mobile:
Dell is definitely pulling the plug on the smartphone business, globally. A tough decision, leaving a market that is expected to reach $150.3 billion in 2014, according to MarketsandMarkets.
However, Jeff Clarke, the head of Dell’s consumer business, confirmed yesterday at the Dell World conference, that there’s no way they’ll jump back into the ring anytime soon. “It needs a lot of investments to really be successful,” told me Clark.
Mobile, of course, is where the growth is in computing and Dell isn’t even on the sidelines anymore. If I were Michael Dell, I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.
I knew what your punchline was before I even started reading the article. Sometimes schadenfreude is extra delish!
Damn, you have a long memory!
I can remember when Dell was an innovative company that had quality products …
damn, I’m old.
My coworker’s comment “Dell was IN the smartphone business?”
I’d forgotten they even pretended to be.
I mean, Dell’s tolerable if you need a cheap PC and don’t want to DIY. But that’s it.
Are they even still in the computer business?
All of my computers are Toshibas, unless you count my phone.
What little innovation Dell brought to the computer business related to manufacturing efficiency and inventory control. Those aren’t things to be ignored, but they don’t move markets as profoundly as reinventing the telephone or coming up with the first “tablet” that real people wanted to own.
If all you can see is how to better trim the corporate sails for your present course in a market that is driven by the innovation of new classes of products, then cashing might be your best strategy.
And considering that Tim Cook and his crew have also bested Dell in manufacturing and inventory control, maybe that time is at hand.
I see Dells a lot in the corporate world. Especially in engineering departments. Interestingly, tablets seem to be reviving the consumer machine vs. workstation divide, with Windows machines taking the largest share of the workstation market. At any rate, I don’t see a whole lot of solid modeling or FEA happening on Apples.
Yeah, we just fired up a cluster of 4 new Dell number cruncher boxes this week, each one with a 32 core processor. We usually upgrade every year or two.
Dell’s held the lead in that type of PC for years. Probably not coincidentally, they’re one of the few PC companies besides Apple that still maintains a significant design presence in the US.
” At any rate, I don’t see a whole lot of solid modeling or FEA happening on Apples.”
Of course not – all that crazy specialized software is written for Windows, and Apple still doesn’t have the marketshare to make it worth even considering a port to OSX. (You could run Windows on a Mac for that, but why bother?)
Plus, when you’re after a rack-farm for rendering, Apple totally doesn’t make the product you want; it’s a niche.
(Apple makes perfectly competent computers; a stacked iMac is as good as any consumer machine.
[Says the guy with a stacked iMac and custom-built consumer-grade Windows machines for software development and gaming; it's the gaming where Apple doesn't keep up these days.]
But neither an iMac nor a “consumer machine” is a capital-W Workstation, nope.)
I hear that the MacMinis make pretty good stackable render farms.
It’s been a long time since I used one, but Dell used to make good computers. Not fancy or flashy, but they worked.
Back in the day 98% of the computers purchased by Miami University came from Dell. The other 2% were for the weirdos in the English Department who insisted on Macs.
Otherwise, I’m with Sigivald’s friend: didn’t know Dell was in the mobile business, except for bog-standard laptops.
Dell used to be our corporate standard, until we got a better deal from HP.
If I recall correctly Apple was in pretty serious trouble in 1997 when that article was written. It’s a testament to Job’s vision and business acumen that he was able to save the company, let alone make it into the juggernaut it is today.