Dell? R&D?
Dell and R&D in one sentence. Are you kidding me?
Stack'em high, ship 'em cheap. Let someone else risk their hide doing R&D.
Here comes the rationale for Mickey's gamble - if you are no longer vertically integrated top to bottom (as HP used to be), you have no choice, but to put your "product" on the market. That is a natural result of "value unlocking" aka "crown jewel stripping" as being practiced by Eliott and Co. All those shards from stripped companies over the years have no choice but to do that. Even HP now will have to do it to some extent. If the PC part has done something R&D wise it will end up on the open market for the Enterprise to consume it.
So a "consumer" (that is politely put) like Dell can come along, bid for it on the open market, pick it up, stack it high and ship it cheap. It can also force its terms on the actual R&D producers due to its sheer size.
That is an interesting gamble and definitely not the gamble Meg is (erroneously) seeing.