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

To: rudedog who wrote (118532)	4/18/1999 8:57:00 PM
From: rvgent	Respond to of 176387

Rod Canion on DELL in Dec 98 What do you think about the direct vs. indirect model and the success of Dell? In the early days when Compaq and Dell were competing in the mid-'80s, the terms [direct vs. indirect] were similar, but it was a totally different marketplace. The indirect model was clearly the right answer. The mail order model was fine for as far as it went, but it didn't go very far. What happened that nobody could have predicted was the market matured -- that people just liked having it [the PC] come the way they wanted it. And that turned out to go in Dell's favor. [Dell CEO] Michael [Dell] being a smart guy picked up on that and was in the right place at the right time, and leveraged it, moved on it real hard. And the result was they really began to run right up Compaq's path. Compaq recognized it was not a channel issue. It was a customer-satisfaction issue. They need to deliver comparable customer satisfaction or they should expect Dell to take market share away from them. ... In reality, Compaq is learning from that model how to deliver better customer satisfaction, and they are moving in that direction. I think that is smart. I really think Compaq should remain a leader. But I think Dell is going to be one of the very strong competitors for the foreseeable future. full text of article at techweb.com