Dell targets Internet for 50 pct of sales
PARIS, April 27 (Reuters) - U.S. personal computer maker Dell Computer Corp, which sells directly to customers, expects to make more than half its sales through the Internet in the next few years, chairman Michael Dell said on Monday.
''Our objective is to make, over the next few years, more than half our sales on the Internet and to migrate our customers from physical orders to electronic ordering,'' Dell said in an interview with financial daily Les Echos.
The process would start with the mass market, move to small companies and then go to large firms, he said.
''Internet constitutes for us the absolute model for direct sales,'' he said. It allowed reduction of costs and made it easier to do business with Dell, he added.
The company was currently making $5 million per day in Internet sales, of which $1 million came from Europe. Dell was making $1 million per day from Internet sales a year ago.
Dell supported the creation of the Open Buying on Internet (OBI) standard protocol but if there were a proliferation of other Internet protocols this would slow development of business on the system, he said.
Dell did not expect the company to drop from its present second position behind Compaq (CPQ - news) this year but should see a consolidation of its market ranking.
''I cannot anticipate the rest of the year but I do not think our positions will deteriorate. They should, on the contrary, be supported.
''Our revenues in the fourth quarter were $3.7 billion, so to fall behind IBM (IBM - news), we would have to see a retreat of several hundred millions of dollars in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of last year, which will not be the case in the normal train of events,'' he said.
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