Dell


Dell Inc., formerly Dell Computer Corporation, is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcams among other products and services. Dell is based in Round Rock, Texas.
Founded by Michael Dell in 1984, Dell started making IBM clone computers and pioneered selling cut-price PCs directly to customers, managing its supply chain and electronic commerce. The company rose rapidly during the 1990s and in 2001 became the largest global PC vendor for the first time. Dell was a pure hardware vendor until 2009 when it acquired Perot Systems. It then entered the market for IT services. The company has expanded storage and networking systems. In the late 2000s, it began expanding from offering computers only to delivering a range of technology for enterprise customers.
Dell is a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, a publicly traded company, as well as a component of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P 500. The company is ranked 31st on the Fortune 500 list in 2022, up from 76th in 2021. It is also the sixth-largest company in Texas by total revenue, according to Fortune magazine. Dell is the second-largest non-oil company in Texas. it is the world's third-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales, after Lenovo and HP. In 2015, Dell acquired the enterprise technology firm EMC Corporation, together becoming divisions of Dell Technologies. Dell began marketing data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, and cloud computing products under the brand Dell EMC until around 2020.

History

Founding and start-up

founded Dell Computer Corporation, doing business as PC's Limited, in 1984. Dell was a student at the University of Texas at Austin, and operated the business from his off-campus dormitory room at Dobie Center. The start-up aimed to sell IBM PC compatible computers built from stock components. Michael Dell started trading in the belief that, by selling personal computer systems directly to customers, PC's Limited could better understand customers' needs and provide the most effective computing services to meet those needs. Dell dropped out of college upon completion of his freshman year at the University of Texas in order to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $1,000 in expansion-capital from his family. As of April 2021, Dell's net worth was estimated to be over $50 billion.
In 1985, PC's Limited launched its first computer, the "Turbo PC", priced at US$795. The Turbo PC featured an Intel 8088-compatible processor with a maximum speed of 8 MHz. At that time PC's Limited was considered one of many white box vendors, although by 1986 Hughes Aircraft was evaluating its products for corporate use after an executive's positive experience with a personal purchase. The company marketed these systems through national computer magazines, selling directly to consumers while custom-assembling each unit based on a range of options. This approach allowed PC's Limited to offer competitive prices compared to retail brands, coupled with the convenience of pre-assembled units, making them one of the early success stories of this business model. The company grossed over $73 million in its first year of operation. The company dropped the PC's Limited name in 1987 to become Dell Computer Corporation and began expanding globally. The reasoning was that this new company name better reflected its presence in the business market, and also resolved issues with the use of "Limited" in a company name in certain countries. The company set up its first international operations in Britain; 11 more followed within the next four years. In June 1988, Dell Computer's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $85 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol DELL. In 1989, the company launched its first laptop product, the Dell 316LT.

Growth in the 1990s and early 2000s

In 1990, Dell Computer tried selling its products indirectly through warehouse clubs and computer superstores, but met with little success, and the company re-focused on its more successful direct-to-consumer sales model. In 1992, Fortune included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company at that time.
Senior vice president Joel Kocher told The Wall Street Journal in 1993 "this isn't a technology business anymore". His view, that PCs were commodities, was reportedly widely held by others in the company. They thought that Dell differentiated itself from others—like fellow Texas company and archrival Compaq—with its distribution expertise and "database engine" of customers that, Kocher said, could sell anything including non-technology products: "We're more like Mary Kay Cosmetics than we are like General Motors".
In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel, Dell planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, which would have brought in an additional $125 million in annual revenue. Bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael Dell to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the reseller channel in 1994. Rollins would soon join Dell full-time and eventually become the company president and CEO.
By the early 1990s the laptop computer market was both more profitable and faster-growing than the overall personal computer market. After discontinuing its unsuccessful existing products in 1993, and hiring John Medica—who had led development of the very successful Apple PowerBook—the company in 1994 introduced the Dell Latitude laptop line.
Originally, Dell did not emphasize the consumer market, due to the higher costs and low profit margins in selling to individuals and households; this changed when the company's Internet site took off in 1996 and 1997. While the industry's average selling price to individuals was going down, Dell's was going up, as second- and third-time computer buyers who wanted powerful computers with multiple features and did not need much technical support were choosing Dell. Dell found an opportunity among PC-savvy individuals who liked the convenience of buying direct, customizing their PC to their means, and having it delivered in days. In early 1997, Dell created an internal sales and marketing group dedicated to serving the home market and introduced a product line designed especially for individual users.
YearRevenue
No. of
employees
19905462,050
19918892,970
19922,0134,650
19932,8735,980
19943,4756,400
19955,2968,400
19967,75910,350
199712,32716,000
199818,24324,400
199925,25636,500

From 1997 to 2004, Dell steadily grew and it gained market share from competitors even during industry slumps, with its fastest growth occurring in the early 2000s. During the same period, rival PC vendors such as Compaq, Gateway, IBM, Packard Bell, and AST Research struggled and eventually left the market or were bought out. Dell surpassed Compaq to become the largest PC manufacturer in 1999. Operating costs made up only 10 percent of Dell's $35 billion in revenue in 2002, compared with 21 percent of revenue at Hewlett-Packard, 25 percent at Gateway, and 46 percent at Cisco. In 2002, when Compaq merged with Hewlett-Packard, the newly combined Hewlett-Packard took the top spot for a time but struggled and Dell soon regained its lead.
In 2002, Dell expanded its product line to include televisions, handhelds, digital audio players, and printers. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell had repeatedly blocked President and COO Kevin Rollins's attempt to lessen the company's heavy dependency on PCs, which Rollins wanted to fix by acquiring EMC Corporation; a move that would eventually occur over 12 years later.
In 2003, at the annual company meeting, the stockholders approved changing the company name to "Dell Inc." to recognize the company's expansion beyond computers.
In 2004, the company announced that it would build a new assembly-plant near Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the city and county provided Dell with $37.2 million in incentive packages; the state provided approximately $250 million in incentives and tax breaks. In July, Michael Dell stepped aside as chief executive officer while retaining his position as chairman of the board. Kevin Rollins, who had held a number of executive posts at Dell, became the new CEO. Despite no longer holding the CEO title, Dell essentially acted as a de facto co-CEO with Rollins.
Under Rollins, Dell purchased the computer hardware manufacturer Alienware in 2006. Dell Inc.'s plan anticipated Alienware continuing to operate independently under its existing management. Alienware expected to benefit from Dell's efficient manufacturing system.

Struggles in mid-2000s

In 2005, while earnings and sales continued to rise, sales growth slowed considerably, and the company stock lost 25% of its value that year. By June 2006, the stock traded around US$25 which was 40% down from July 2005—the high-water mark of the company in the post-dotcom era.
The slowing sales growth has been attributed to the maturing PC market, which constituted 66% of Dell's sales, and analysts suggested that Dell needed to make inroads into non-PC business segments such as storage, services, and servers. Dell's price advantage was tied to its ultra-lean manufacturing for desktop PCs, but this became less important as savings became harder to find inside the company's supply chain, and as competitors such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer made their PC manufacturing operations more efficient to match Dell, weakening Dell's traditional price differentiation. Throughout the entire PC industry, declines in prices along with commensurate increases in performance meant that Dell had fewer opportunities to upsell to their customers. As a result, the company was selling a greater proportion of inexpensive PCs than before, which eroded profit margins. The laptop segment had become the fastest-growing of the PC market, but Dell produced low-cost notebooks in China like other PC manufacturers which eliminated Dell's manufacturing cost advantages, plus Dell's reliance on Internet sales meant that it missed out on growing notebook sales in big box stores. CNET has suggested that Dell was getting trapped in the increasing commoditization of high volume low margin computers, which prevented it from offering more exciting devices that consumers demanded.
Despite plans of expanding into other global regions and product segments, Dell was heavily dependent on US corporate PC market, as desktop PCs sold to both commercial and corporate customers accounted for 32 percent of its revenue, 85 percent of its revenue comes from businesses, and 64 percent of its revenue comes from North and South America, according to its 2006 third-quarter results. US shipments of desktop PCs were shrinking, and the corporate PC market, which purchases PCs in upgrade cycles, had largely decided to take a break from buying new systems. The last cycle started around 2002, three or so years after companies started buying PCs ahead of the perceived Y2K problems, and corporate clients were not expected to upgrade again until extensive testing of Microsoft's Windows Vista, putting the next upgrade cycle around 2008. Heavily dependent on PCs, Dell had to slash prices to boost sales volumes, while demanding deep cuts from suppliers.
Dell had long stuck by its direct sales model. Consumers had become the main drivers of PC sales in recent years, yet there had a decline in consumers purchasing PCs through the Web or on the phone, as increasing numbers were visiting consumer electronics retail stores to try out the devices first. Dell's rivals in the PC industry, HP, Gateway and Acer, had a long retail presence and so were well poised to take advantage of the consumer shift. The lack of a retail presence stymied Dell's attempts to offer consumer electronics such as flat-panel TVs and MP3 players. Dell responded by experimenting with mall kiosks, plus quasi-retail stores in Texas and New York.
Dell had a reputation as a company that relied upon supply chain efficiencies to sell established technologies at low prices, instead of being an innovator. By the mid-2000s many analysts were looking to innovating companies as the next source of growth in the technology sector. Dell's low spending on R&D relative to its revenue —which worked well in the commoditized PC market—prevented it from making inroads into more lucrative segments, such as MP3 players and later mobile devices. Increasing spending on R&D would have cut into the operating margins that the company emphasized. Dell had done well with a horizontal organization that focused on PCs when the computing industry moved to horizontal mix-and-match layers in the 1980s, but by the mid-2000 the industry shifted to vertically integrated stacks to deliver an end-to-end IT product, and Dell lagged far behind competitors like Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.
In 2006, Dell rolled out DellConnect to answer customer inquiries more quickly. In July 2006, the company started its Direct2Dell blog, and then in February 2007, Michael Dell launched IdeaStorm.com, asking customers for advice including selling Linux computers and reducing the promotional "bloatware" on PCs. These initiatives did manage to cut the negative blog posts from 49% to 22%, as well as reduce the "Dell Hell" prominent on Internet search engines.
There was also criticism that Dell used faulty components for its PCs, particularly the 11.8 million OptiPlex desktop computers sold to businesses and governments from May 2003 to July 2005 that suffered from faulty capacitors. A battery recall in August 2006, as a result of a Dell laptop catching fire, caused much negative attention for the company though later, Sony was found responsible for the manufacturing of the batteries, however a Sony spokesman said the problem concerned the combination of the battery with a charger, which was specific to Dell.
2006 marked the first year that Dell's growth was slower than the PC industry as a whole. By the fourth quarter of 2006, Dell lost its title of the largest PC manufacturer to Hewlett Packard whose Personal Systems Group was invigorated thanks to a restructuring initiated by their CEO Mark Hurd.