Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Jim Patterson who wrote (36837)	4/6/1998 9:29:00 PM
From: John Hauser	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Jim, You really have some thoughtful insights to the PC issues at hand. But don't you think Dell PC's are of a higher quality, or at least have a perception of higher quality. I know as a PC professional that when I'm working with a client, they often make very positive remarks about my Dell 266. I can't tell you how many people have done so, but I'll tell you it is quite frequent. People seem to have equated Dell products with high quality (and this is backed up in most PC World magazines for the last 2 years) and these people are generally using your "average" programs, MSOFfice and such. But I'm sure they would want the "latest & greatest" system regardless if they needed it or not. Heck, the other day I was at a garage sale Sunday in a very modest town and saw this guy had a Dell PC box in the garage to which I (of course) applauded. Anyway, I equate this growing awareness of the high quality Dell machine with a high "mind share" and I have got to believe that this Co. is eating away at CPQ & IBM's market shares based simply on perceived quality. Dell has what, 7-8% of the market share? That's alot more share to gobble up. But what do I know. Go TRIBE! JH

To: Jim Patterson who wrote (36837)	4/6/1998 10:21:00 PM
From: K. M. Strickler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

JP, One of the advantages of DELL and its various support relationships is that there is price competition between the supporters, where if you are supported by only the manufacturer, you have to pay for their support at their price! No deal there! Remember a DELL support alliance can also support GTW, MICRON or any number of others! Regards, Ken

To: Jim Patterson who wrote (36837)	4/7/1998 11:03:00 AM
From: Meathead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

The issue is the belief that the ability to produce cheaper and cheaper machines will supplant growth in high end segments. That belief is fundamentally and factually flawed. The reason why there was no market for Wintel workstations 18mos ago was because none of the UNIX power apps were ready for NT at that time.... not because the Intel architecture lacked power. We designed a dual Pentium Pro machine 2 1/2 years ago that could smoke a SPARC 10 in benchmarks at a fraction of the cost. So at the low to midrange, the hardware/OS was ready to compete. You can scream about slowing PC growth all you want. An industry still growing at double digit rates and a company stealing market share is a recipie for success... precisely Dell's positioning. Dell will grow to 16-17B in revenues this year.. 30-40% growth.. I can live with that kind of slowdown. I can see Dell with 50-60B in revenues within 5 years. Now I have two machines that are faster than the notebook, but in the real world, there ain't any difference Again, you compare machines based solely on speed... this is why you continually miss the point of what a high end machine is. I don't think you have a clue as to what the real world of business computing needs and compatibility issues really are. That's becuase you understand it from the consumer side... 10% of Dell's business.. therefore you understand about 10% of Dell. As for support, Dell is growing in this area nicely and as needed. You don't want to ramp up too fast in anything or you have excesses. You can have excess service capacity. Dell does not want to be all things to all people... but at their level, they have the right amount of service offerings and as they grow, their service menu will also. You see, balancing offerings with service is key... another thing Dell does extremely well. Another thing Dell knows and exploits is the fact that all large companies have their own full time on-site IT staff and don't need a tremendous amount of support. Can you imagine companies like Ford and Boeing relying solely on resellers to setup and maintain their huge networks? The smaller accounts with more limited resources need this kind of service. Dell is far from saturating the big accounts. DELL is running out of mature segments to avoid with out getting into another business. Wrong. Dell could focus almost solely on WinTel servers and Workstations (which are right now in their infancy), become the dominant leader and become hugely profitable. The growth rate here will be phenominal, especially servers, with the internet explosion. The only mature segment is cheap PC's as it uses mature technology. Leading edge desktops aren't mature. Do you really think 100Mhz BX system demand will be limited? Within 6 mos, 90% of all systems sold by Dell will be BX based. For CPQ, it will be about 50%. They'll still have a lot of older FX and LX based systems to flush. Last year you would have said the same thing about the 66Mhz LX/FX... limited market. It quickly became 95% of all systems. Now it's mature, you'll see it showing up in low end consumer boxes, but before you can blink, Dell won't sell it because it's not very profitable anymore. Dell plays in the parabolic profitability growth curve. When technology matures, they bail. They rely on moore's law better than anybody and their business model exploits it to it's fullest. That's another thing I love about this company. MEATHEAD