September 2, 2004

Is HP losing resellers to Dell

Having resllers is a key strategy to the vendors like HP and IBM in competing with Dell (which goes direct) - especially in reaching the business market.

Traditionally Dell has not been known to be channel friendly. However with Dell making "white box" computers for resellers to sell and with resellers more interested in geting low cost and quality computers to their customers, a resller might choose to go with Dell or HP for their computers.

Warrillow Weekly writes n the second quarter of 2004, 28 percent of solution providers polled in the CRN Monthly Solution Provider Survey said Dell is now their best-selling desktop PC, compared with 20 percent for HP. And in June 2004, Dell scored a 52 percent channel satisfaction rating, compared with 50 percent for HP.

HP has long been known as a channel booster that has spent countless millions of dollars cultivating partners and has moved 65 percent (more than $50 billion) of its business through that channel. Dell on the other hand was a longtime channel antagonist that has been quietly working with its partners in recent years. Part of Dell's success has been in changing the perception of channel partners to a point where there is no longer a fear of partnering with Dell. In interviews with 15 solution providers for the survey, 10 said they "see no difference between partnering with HP or Dell." And among the five that preferred HP, there were still some complaints about HP's execution in the field.

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