Gary- While E-machines push into the low-end market is impressive, it should be recognized for what it is: a conquering of the low-end...not the middle/high consumer market, nor any business segments...
They have decimated the Packard-Bell's, and taken the low-end share of the big name brands competing in that space (see here Compaq, IBM, and even to some extent, Gateway), and hurt the white boxes...This is a far ways from encroaching on Dell's territory (in any significant way)....As you should know, Dell is simply not involved (at all) in the low-end PC market.....and (still) has not shown a desire to do so.......sales of Dell's $999 PC (Dell's only offering under $1000...should be classified as MIDDLE and not low-end) makes up such a miniscule portion of overall sales..
E-machines may actually be helping Dell...by distracting a lot of Dell's competitors in a market segment (low-end) which they thought they had locked up...and maybe did not have to spend a lot of energy on...
Selling to businesses (even small) is a different game altogether.
Selling to large corporations is absolutely a different game...and an E-machines is an enormous ways from being able to compete in that market...Look at the unsuccessful attempts of Gateway and Micron to take even a little share away from Dell in the large corporate market...and Gateway, Micron have service organization, large sales forces, the ability to customize.......E-machines has yet to prove that they can run their company successfully with such a model...they have proven that they can make one or two basic models, and sell the hell out of them.......also, Compaq, IBM have, in many cases, been selling PC's at a loss in the large corporate market, and is still not able to shake Dell pace...
E-machines, as far as I know, has sold little or no machines abroad. Despite its success here, it is always a different game to compete in the disperate international markets...
The burden of proof remains with E-machines that they can make incremental steps to even approach Dell's key markets....
So, at this point, while E-machines is interesting, I think your frequent posting/conversation of their sales (not profit) success at this point is more than enough, and is getting to the point of overkill......It simply is not on the radar screen at this point (as a threat to Dell's successful growth)....How 'bout revisiting this in 6 months, when it is likely e-machines will have to start making some major decisions about what sort of company they are going to be, and some of their el cheapo units are breaking, and their response to customer's service needs/problems...maybe they will be extremely successful...who knows? But who knows if E-machines will even be around when the next Windows upgrade becomes the standard, and it might not run on low-end boxes...
I think you have overweighted e-machines importance lately....
There are a lot more pressing questions for Dell that have bottom-line implications.....Let's re-visit those.. |
