Michael Dell reiterated his opposition to pulling out of the PC market, a day after the company released a survey showing that HP customers were “concerned” with HP’s choice to possibly do just that.
at a meeting with analysts and reporters the day before the company’s Dell World conference kicks off in round Rock, Dell said that it “didn’t make a lot of sense” to remove the PC from the total solution. He also reiterated his support for Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system as a tablet platform, stating that Dell would release a “wide range of products around Windows 8′s release.”
Michael Dell was publicly critical after Hewlett-Packard made the shocking decision to possibly spin off its PC group. That decision, made by then chief executive Leo Apotheker, became less certain after HP’s board fired Apotheker and replaced him with former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman. since then, reports have indicated that HP may be reconsidering the spinoff.
“You know that there are a billion and a half PCs, and that seems to me that there is a pretty big number,” Dell said.
Dell acknowledged that the notion of the client is changing to include devices like tablets and phones, which are “augmenting” the PC, he said. “[But] we don’t see PCs going away at all,” Dell said.
Dell also made an economic case to remain in the PC business, noting that the company’s other businesses benefited from the economies of scale that the PC brings. put another way, 95 percent of most of the world’s components end up in the PC, including microprocessors and disk drives. Buying those components in bulk brings with it volume discounts.
“If you’re not in client devices, you can’t provide an end-to-end solution to customers, and you have to pay a lot more,” Dell said. He called the “foundation of the business the client business. although our business is much broader today, to take out one part of the solution we don’t think makes a lot of sense.”
A Dell spokeswoman also took a step back from a survey the company released on Tuesday. That report, commissioned by Dell and by Technology Business Research, showed that out of 130 HP customers surveyed by TBR, 46 percent of respondents were less likely to purchase HP products and services. in companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, that number rose to 53 percent, the survey found.
The Dell spokeswoman said that the report had been conducted independently by TBR but that it validated the company’s own findings.
Michael Dell also reiterated his support for Windows 8, which he and executives from HTC threw their weight behind in the weeks following Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
Google’s Android, Michael Dell said, had “done really well on the smartphone, and not so well, on the tablet”.
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