Monday April 27, 7:42 pm Eastern Time
Dell says PC demand "robust"
SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 (Reuters) - Dell Computer Corp. chief financial officer Tom Meredith said that PC demand is ''robust'' and that the competitive PC landscape is ''rational.''
Meredith told a Hambrecht & Quist technology conference that as PC market share continues to consolidate among the top five players, there is still an opportunity for Dell to gain more market share.
''We only have five to six percent market share,'' Meredith said, adding that Dell is a ''hair's breadth'' away from becoming the number two PC maker.
He also said that Dell's sales over the Internet are now approaching an annual run rate of about $1.5 billion, based on the last quarter's data of about $4 million a day in revenues coming from sales at its Web site.
Meredith said that Dell still has no plans to enter into the sub-$1,000 PC market, saying that it does not represent the ''profit pool'' that Dell normally pursues.
But he added that Intel Corp's (INTC - news) next version of its Celeron family of chips for the low-cost market, code-named Mendocino, represents a more interesting opportunity than the first Celeron chip, which has received some bad reviews.
''Certainly the sequel to Celeron, Mendocino, becomes more interesting,'' Meredith said, but he added that Dell remains focused on the higher-end systems.
He said he could not comment about the quarter, because Dell is in its quiet period, with its quarter ending Friday.
Meredith said that by geographies, demand for Dell domestically (in the U.S.), demand is ''very, very robust, Europe is even more robust and Asia Pacific is healthy,'' he said.
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