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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dan3 who wrote (174907)	5/20/2005 11:08:53 AM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Dan ,you only want to talk..which is what the Thread is for. But your education needs to come from somewhere else, like in Dell's history. Or you could visit Dells physical sites, as several here have done. I just try to give you the facts, and you question those as tho I am handing out BS. Land near airports that was bought years ago has grown tremendously in value. Dell has grown sales by @$10 bil last year, to do that they needed to hire @10,000 workers. No retirement owed yet to those. Dell supports schools and Universities with scholarships, kind of a grow-your own source of young workers. etc,etc, but too much to explain in a few words here Sig

To: Dan3 who wrote (174907)	5/20/2005 1:13:03 PM
From: kaka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Dan3, Re: Dell doesn't design anything and they don't make anything. They are terrific distributors and marketers of products designed and built in China from templates and components supplied and manufactured by Intel. It's been a winning strategy for a long time, but if the guys who actually design and manufacture the stuff Dell distributes ever get tired of leaving Dell's gross margins on the table, it is over for Dell. First Ben Rosen, then Michael Capellas, then Carly Fiorina, joined by countless Dell rivals, and now Dan3. The same argument is made over and over. Scientists say the sun will eventually burn out also, but I'm not stocking up on can goods at this moment. cheers, kaka

To: Dan3 who wrote (174907)	5/27/2005 9:29:49 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

Just catching up, but I think I see an answer or three waiting here. <<Dell doesn't design anything and they don't make anything. They are terrific distributors and marketers of products designed and built in China from templates and components supplied and manufactured by Intel. It's been a winning strategy for a long time, but if the guys who actually design and manufacture the stuff Dell distributes ever get tired of leaving Dell's gross margins on the table, it is over for Dell.>> Dell does design, but also assembles (rather than simply distribute/market). In particular, it assembles goods as soon as it owns them - i.e., as soon as the goods are in the factory, rather than leaving them in stock for a week or four until needed. And it 'persuades' suppliers to deliver to order at a rate which neither allows inventory build-up nor many stock-outs. This may sound simple, but almost no other companies manage it. Toyota's the only large company that comes to my mind. And PC parts, unlike most others, lose value daily. I think you have to include Taiwan as well as China, as a supplier, plus S. Korea, Malaysia, and no doubt others. Minor, but it's not dependent on any single country - I remember worries after a Taiwan earthquake. And the key... <<if the guys who actually design and manufacture the stuff Dell distributes ever get tired of leaving Dell's gross margins on the table, it is over for Dell>> But no one else has yet been able to do this. They've tried - think Acer, as a classic example. They use the same (-ish) parts, assemmble them as their own business anyway, build a similar product in the same areas, and yet they cost more and can't work as cheaply or efficiently. So they don't make the margins that Dell does. Also, those are very thin margins anyway - compare SUNW, say (and never mind MSFT). Not many tech companies can thrive on Dell's level of sustained margins, and R&D costs are only a part of the reason. There's more going on behind the scenes. There's no losses on inventory in the channel, and no retailer's markup. There's extreme focus on process, rather than product - because it's basically a waste of money to get a few techie kudos for a billion dollars, if you can wait a week or ten and get an equal product (and still have it on sale early enough because of no channel...). So work out how to save money on the build/sale process, instead. Add the deliberate ignoring of markets that may be profitable but which are still too small to justify the effort; and of course the relationships with many large customers. And, no doubt, ruthless supplier management which can only really be done by the market-leading OEM; I suspect Intel now needs Dell almost as much as Dell has always needed Intel. A top athlete makes sprinting look simple, but yet very few people can actually run 100m under 10 seconds. It requires not just knowledge, nor only the raw materials, but determination and effort to a rare degree. Even though we can all see exactly what our sprinter does during the race, it's not that easy to copy, it's hard to copy well and sustain the effort, and it's near-impossible to get the same results...