Dell: PC demand 'seems to have stabilized'

Dell hinted Monday that the worst may be over regarding the demand for its products.

Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said that though demand for Dell PCs, servers, and services "seems to have stabilized," it's not consistent throughout all customer segments and geographic regions. In addition, he says that when the company reports its second-quarter earnings next month its revenue will tick up slightly over the previous quarter. That will be accompanied by a small decline in gross margins, which suggests a more competitive pricing environment for PC components.

A sign that businesses--Dell's best customers--are starting to spend money on IT again is good news for the whole industry. But it's particularly important to Dell because its bottom line has taken a huge hit since last year's global economic meltdown. The company has been looking to reboot its business by reorganizing, reassessing product lines, and, chiefly, cutting costs.

Dell will hold its annual shareholders' meeting Friday morning in Austin, where CEO Michael Dell and Gladden will no doubt be questioned about their plan to take advantage of any kind of resurgent demand for Dell products.

[BogusBasin]

Dell should close down their business and give the money back to the shareholders. Amen

[monkeyfun14]

Bogus you hate PC's we get it. **** and ****

[cnetguard]

monkeyfun, you're no fun, dude. BogusBasin was just making fun of something that Michael Dell said about Apple almost 12 years ago: http://news.cnet.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_3-203937.html

At the time Dell was at the top of its game and Apple was a step away from the grave. Now, Apple is the vedette of the tech industry and Dell, although not doing really bad, is certainly past its prime.

[Random_Walk]

"cnetguard" nailed it perfectly.

The real funny part comes in when you hear Michael Dell in 2005 publicly stating that he would be "very happy" to install OSX on his products:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Dell-We-Would-License-Mac-OS-X/1118955105

quote-->
"If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers," company chairman Michael Dell said. Dell declined to elaborate publicly any further.
<--quote

[monkeyfun14]

@cnetguard + Random_Walk

He does the same thing for any company besides Apple.

[ckh1272]

@monkeyfun_14-"cnetguard" and "Random_Walk" provided some proof, so how about you do the same or is it just better to be ignorant?

[Seaspray0]

BogusBasin should close down his mouth and give an apology to all cnet readers. Amen

[lfreel]

We need ot ask all mfrs not only Dell. A like HP desktop is a hundred dollars cheaper than a Dell.

[monkeyfun14]

Dell's tend to be built better imho

[Random_Walk]

Depends. On the server side, Dell's quite frankly suck (at least the 2950 and R900's do), while HP's DL series servers are practically bulletproof.

[ikramerica--2008]

not better built anymore. HP, in my limited experience, is now better. we set up my sister's business with HPs, desktops, micro systems and laptops, because the dells they used to have and the dells my dad's business had were inferior. the hps, by and large, have been reliable, with only one laptop needing repair due to a motherboard problem (graphics chip, wireless and usb ports all failing).

[Seaspray0]

The hardware is pretty good for both but it's not just the hardware but the management software. The HP's do have better management software.

[TekCoach]

Seeing alot of negative towards Dell. Funny think is that Dell just had #1 spot for Enterprise Customer Satisfaction by TBR! I have seen both servers and the build quality is much better on Dell now. Dell had Metal Drive Carriers while the new HP's have plastic. HP also tries to force you ito their propriatary Switches for Blade functionality. Only reason that HP has marketshare there is that their customers drank the coolaid and now are stuck until they are fully depreciated. Dell as all MFGs have their ups and downs. Dell is a little down right now and apple is pretty high but I would never run an enterprise on Apple cause they dont have any to speak of. HP? Never, I want the flexibility to change technology in the future if HP is not goping in a direction that benifits my business. IBM? They are jumping ship as fast as Lenovo will shell out the cash. HW MFGs are like the phone companies and Cable companies. They all have custiomer service issues, quality issues, and technology issues. I like Dell because they dont make you sign a 'virtual' contract with propriatary solutions and services

[Random_Walk]

Wow - a hardware fanboy... those are kinda rare around here...

"I have seen both servers and the build quality is much better on Dell now."

...except for random Stop-Bit Errors in RAM (such joy to suddenly lose half your RAM on a production box!), ungodly long boot times (compared with HP boxen of the same size and capacities), crap ILO performance, higher prices, complete instability in a VMWare farm... the list is almost endless. My corp paid way over $45k+ each for the pile of R-900's I have in my stable... one would expect a 4-way quad-core Xeon w/ 64GB of RAM (each) to at least hold itself up under ordinary conditions, no? Well, apparently Dell didn't.

Dell used to be rock-solid with the older PE 2500 and 2600 series servers, but somewhere along the way, their QA department apparently decided to sit around and smoke weed all day or something.

"HP also tries to force you ito their propriatary Switches for Blade functionality."

You misspelled "Sun" up there (who, during the last round of purchasing, couldn't seem to get it in their heads that we didn't want blades). Our HP rep never even breathed the words "blade" or "ProCurve" after we told him that we use all-Cisco gear and didn't want blades. To Dell's credit, neither did they (but damn their bid was huge...)

"I like Dell because they dont make you sign a 'virtual' contract with propriatary solutions and services."

I just bought 10 HP DL-380's without having to do any such thing.

By the by, call your demigod up and lodge a complaint for me: I detested Dell's 'take it or leave it' attitude during the last round of bids, and the sales-critter was all sizzle but no steak when it came to meeting specs.

[rocrocroc1]

Dell engineering? Until otherwise announced, their featured laptop Studio line includes a bothersome plug on the "side" of the computer,a fan duct that is blocked by the base of the screen when the screen is opened and a problematic slot load CD/DVD player. Meld this with their overseas service department and what used to me to be one of the best computer companies in the world is now destined for closing.

[ikramerica--2008]

yeah, my first windows machine I bought myself was a 1993 dell, and that thing was a TANK. I bought it to play games, and it never failed. quality construction, heavy duty case, etc. now it's all flimsy plastic junk.

[BigGuns149]

I don't think that businesses, with the exception of the ones that have gone under, stopped spending on IT I think most businesses just made their replacement cycles on computer hardware longer. At some point the marginal cost of buying a new computer is trivial compared to getting a computer up and running again. For businesses that were already at 4-5 year replacement cycles there is only so much longer one can drag out the life of the computer before the cost of keeping the old computer running becomes untenable.

[bob blob]

didn't dell say a couple years ago when their stock was tanking that they weren't going to release projections or guidance prior to earnings release anymore? i guess they forgot to add "except when it's good news."