Dell CEO: Very few will survive the PC bloodbath

Much talk of a fading technology platform

Dell's Euro head ad Michael Dell are attempting to put a good spin on their prospect for survival in the Post-PC technology landscape of tomorrow - by the current but getting old definition of PC (Persnal Computer) in sales, with no regard for how a PC will be defined - whether Tablets, Chromebook type notebooks will be the new definition of PC in future or not.

Since Dell, Microsoft and HP to name just three dinosaurs have very little presence in the Tablet, burgeoning Chromebook notebook category or PC capability Smartphone markets, I suggest that Dell especially, realize and acknowledge that the Apple and Android/Linux mobile ecosystems have eaten their lunch, with a significant proportion of the PC usage moving to mobile devices. IBM's and Apple's cooperative investment of 3 plus $billion in Enterprise end user coputing that is in very high demand should be an indicator.

The almost permanent tethering of Dell to Microsoft Windows only will continue a failed policy and results. Maybe Microsoft's injection of 4 $billion into privatized Dell was not such a great benefit after all.

Zombie PC OEMs

Foraging for profits where there never was any. Why don't they put their capital to use in a place where there is some hope? I hear there are several mobile thingies where profits are to be had.

Bah!

Well, Dell, you certainly will be last on my list of proposed vendors since I had to deal with the twin idiocies of "Dell Lock-In Electronics" and "Locked-in Part Obsolescence" with my aging but still giving 100% laptop's power supply. If not for this I'd be a big Dell singer-upper.

I'll buy elsewhere for my next computer, which will run Linux because the arse-faced abortion of Windows 10 is a straw too much for this camel's back.

With any luck the said computer will feature an ARM-derived architecture too, so I won't have to worry about hardware lockdown elsewhere in the machine.

And you, dear Dell, have only yourselves to blame.

Is the same Michael Dell…

…who recommended that Apple should be broken up and the money given back to the shareholders? Seriously, dude, this prediction malarkey is tough - and you suck at it.

The other thing you suck at is making decent computers. I ought to know - I've had three of the feckers (a Dell Dimension 486 (which I was given), a Dell XPS (which I bought because I didn't learn after the Dimension debacle), and a notebook (from work, which I still have - but which I relegated to a drawer after a week and didn't use again because it was so vile.))

I think that there will always be, at the very least, a market for carefully designed, well thought out and beautifully constructed (and often bespoke) PCs for users who demand quality hardware but don't, for whatever reason, want a Mac. This is the raison d'être of many of the small PC manufacturers- and I'll wager that some of them will still be around when Dell, at long last, has been broken up and the money returned to its investors.

Totally agree

"I think that there will always be, at the very least, a market for carefully designed, well thought out and beautifully constructed (and often bespoke) PCs for users who demand quality hardware but don't, for whatever reason, want a Mac."

Maybe not bespoke like Rolls-Royce style bespoke, but certainly firmly entrenched in the "not crap" camp. This is what Lenovo _was_ doing with the ex-IBM ThinkPads. Last generation, however, they started removing useful features and trying to make the thing look like a grayish-black MacBook Pro. They're only now reversing some of this with the new generation T and W series.

ThinkPads are a perfect example of this -- boring, non-sexy business notebooks that a certain set of professionals gravitate towards. They get their margin on these boxes -- they're still very expensive compared to a similarly-specced consumer garbage notebook.

What I think will happen with the PC market is this -- most consumers who used to buy the garbage $300 HP laptop from Best Buy are happy with their phones and iPads now. That whole range of the market is going to be gone, since PCs are increasingly going to be a niche purchase. As he people who need PCs shrink, they're going to be a more finicky bunch overall, and that is where the higher margins come through.

on a somewhat unrealted topic

Do any manufactures still make PC/Laptop motherboards with BIOS only and no EUFI?

More recent experiences with Dell have made me too go elsewhere. I expect corporates will stick with the big boys but smaller users are better served by fleet-of-foot smaller companies. The big boys currently have warehouses full of unsold old models. If I don't want "last year's model" but newest technology or something bespoke, the smaller guys win. On the same basis they can build an inexpensive box by buying last year's tech components at prices that reflect that it's been superceded. The issue for them is that the home user and SME markets are now much smaller with mobile devices nibbling away.