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back to article Michael Dell: PC profits plunge not down to tablets

The sluggish demand for PCs that saw Dell's profit dive below Wall Street estimates in the last quarter is not due to tablets, Dell CEO Michael Dell said yesterday. Despite Dell's PC revenues falling 6 per cent in the third quarter of 2011, PCs are still selling better than tablets he told a conference in Bangalore, describing …

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  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    That's going to take some spinning

    So after 20years of selling Dell as the cheap place to buy your PC, they shift into being the cheap place to buy your servers.

    And the new idea is that they are the deeply committed and highly professional place to manage all your data and support your operations - a better IBM than IBM?

    A bit like GM using it's widespread brand recognition, reputation for style and deep pockets to go into the fashion business.

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    1. JEDIDIAH
      Reply Icon
      Linux

      Nothing new really...

      > So after 20years of selling Dell as the cheap place to buy your PC, they shift into being the cheap place to buy your servers.

      Where have you been? They have already been just that for quite awhile now.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bung!

    Did the under-the-table advertising money from Microsoft also take a dip?

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Close

    He may as well close the company and give the money back to the shareholders

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  4. Gene

    When I see "Michael Dell: <insert quote here>" I automatically reach for my hip boots.

    1 0
  5. Mikel
    Happy

    Sure it wasn't tablets - and phones

    That money for the 60M tablets sold in 2011 was just surplus. It didn't come out of anybody's laptop budget. Wink, wink.

    And the 100M tablets to sell this year, and the SmartTVs, Set-top-boxes and whatnot - likewise fairy money sprinkled from the wings of angels.

    2 1
  6. Bradley
    WTF?

    Fail

    Tablets are additional devices, sure. But what consumers don't have is the endless cash required to maintain the full range of smartphone/tablet/pc that are now so complementary to each other. When they buy their tablet and discover that it does what a new PC would have done for them, they skip that particular upgrade and in turn weaken PC sales.

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  7. John H Woods Silver badge

    I thought this was interesting ...

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/18/clayton-christensen-how-pursuit-of-profits-kills-innovation-and-the-us-economy/

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  8. Mikel
    Go

    Vizio is coming to get you

    Vizio, famous for wrecking the monitor industry with low prices, is now gunning for PCs. They claim the prices are "impossibly low." The styling looks good too.

    Michael Dell needs to focus on that, not tablets.

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  9. KroSha

    Given that the vast majority of PC / laptops in the business space, and the consumer one at that, are massively overpowered for what they are actually used for, I'm not surprised that sales are taking a dive.

    I still see Optiplex GX60s and GX750s at the various offices I visit. They still work and are doing the job that's needed. So why is a business going to replace them just because the calendar says so?

    So if some budget is being shifted to the post-PC device, I wouldn't be surprised to see the refresh cycle lengthen.

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  10. CheesyTheClown
    FAIL

    Hmm... just replaced my programming PC with a tablet

    My Christmas gift from my family this year was a Samsung Series 7 Slate. It's running Windows 8, Microsoft Office and Visual Studio. I use it for playing high end video games like DC Universe with a joystick. I use it for programming codecs used by nearly every broadcaster in Europe and the U.S. for contribution and I use it for watching films.

    I have nearly replaced all my other PCs (except the ones hooked up to the projectors in my game room) with this tablet. I keep a dock at home and a dock at the office. In my backpack, I carry a 1kg computer a stylus and sometimes a joystick. The bag actually weighs more than the computer now.

    So... while iOS and Android based tablets are pretty useless (have those too), this one is in fact a full PC replacement as it is in fact a full PC.

    Somehow I see a whole lot of IT departments wanting to move in this direction in the future.

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  11. ideapete

    A Rising Tide

    Lifts all sorts of BS

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