November 12, 2004

Where is Dell Going? Knowing This Answer Is Important.

Dell's success has been that is has a top notch fulfillment and inventory system and can sell PCs at a low cost. Cut can it go on forever as a stunning success? Kevin Rollins, Dell's CEO has a game plan to ensure Dell's sustained success, over time, which includes more services, delivered via consulting partners. Read Info World's extensive interview.

Here's a snip of the interview, covering PCs:

InfoWorld: What is your vision for the role of PCs evolving, especially in the larger IT shops? And based on that evolution, how can Dell best position itself to take advantage of that? Or is the 'vision thing' not just Dell's thing?

Rollins: No the vision thing is there. We are No. 1 worldwide by quite a margin on the client side and expanding, according to IDC and others, every single quarter. Our expectation is that the industry will consolidate and that more of our competitors will exit.

Our vision is to continue to lead in client-based technologies as well as move up into the datacenter as more companies exit the client business. So we are looking at wireless for mobile computing. There is a huge push there. But there is still a large need and desire for the technology associated with desktops. We have never abandoned that, and we will continue to invest there.

InfoWorld: Who do you anticipate will be the first to drop out of that market?

Rollins: That is hard to say because it is generally not the case where someone just closes their doors. You had Compaq and HP merge, and so you got one company left there. On the consumer side you had Gateway and e-Machines merge. You have a number of Japanese companies who might question how long and how viable they want to be. There will be a few companies in Europe that will question their commitment. IBM is questioning it all the time. They have already outsourced all of their manufacturing capabilities for desktops, so it would not big a big shift for them to let it go.

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