Dell's Rollins shoots for $80 billion by 2009

Dell CEO Kevin Rollins says the computer maker has the potential to be an $80 billion company in the next three to four years, but not through its U.S.-based bread-and-butter PC business.

Though the company enjoys great success in the United States, with $49.2 billion in revenues reported for its fiscal 2005, Dell ranks second behind Hewlett-Packard in overseas sales. Dell said it currently averages $135.2 million in revenues per day, a number that would need to nearly double to reach Rollins' lofty goals.

"Our revenue last year accounted for only about 4 percent of global spending on information-technology products and services, so we have tremendous room to grow," Rollins said during the company's annual shareholder meeting Friday.

Rollins said he expects more than 80 percent of Dell's future growth to come from products other than desktop PCs, which the company started selling 10 years ago. The CEO also said he expects about 55 percent of Dell's growth in the next four years to come from outside the Americas.

The top executive at the No. 1 computer maker told shareholders that Dell has great prospects in its newfound printer and television business.

For example, Rollins said, Dell shipped 10 million printers in just more than the two years since the company introduced the first of its own line of printers. Dell says it is No. 2 in the U.S. in both the inkjet and laser categories, behind HP.

Likewise, Dell is holding its own in the flat-panel-display category as it continues to expand into digital and high-definition television.

The company is expected to launch about a dozen new models of flat panels this fall as part of a holiday sales blitz. Executives have said they expect the 30-inch to 40-inch models to be the so-called sweet spot of their sales focus. Dell is also launching a premium brand series of desktop and laptop computers aimed at customers who are not afraid of high-ticket items.

Other high growth areas Dell has identified include its storage systems and services. The company's server and storage business accounted for about $35 billion in the last year, with more than 70,000 installations piggybacking on deals involving database-software from Oracle. Rollins said Dell is encouraged by the more than 750 high-performance computing clusters the company has contracted out to financial services and telecommunications companies.

Likewise, Dell is expected to build on its 81 million active service contracts with corporations of all sizes. Dell's services, however, are dwarfed by rival offerings from IBM Global Services, EDS, Accenture and HP.

To bolster its aggressive 4-year plan, Dell is continuing to build new manufacturing plants in strategic areas. A new plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., the company's largest, will begin operations in September. Dell said it is also increasing its manufacturing capacity in Xiamen, China.

Earlier this year, Dell added a second building to its customer contact center in Oklahoma City and opened new centers in El Salvador and Chandigarh, India.

Dell currently has manufacturing and support facilities in 44 countries.

dell not a good company

I read where dell hopes to be an $80 B corp. Not with my business. Bought a computer (supposedly with DVD capability---on the order form---and paid for). It will not play DVD's. Been trying to resolve this since Mar. 3 different supervisors stated "they would take care of it." Not so now get a notice telling me my order has been cancellde.
Dell doesn't care about small potatoes.

[PCCRomeo]

I bet...

Those "facilities" in El Salvador and other countries are where their support team is located . Remember the commercial Dell had not to long ago that had the guy calling Dell Tech support 24/7, and the support tech was a caucasian male? I wonder why they didn't just get one of their actual Asian support technicians to do the commercial, that I'm SURE would have done it for a lot less money.