PC – Max Smolaks from the Tech Week Europe reports on the highlights of Michael Dell’s speech at Dell’s Solutions Summit in Brussels.
Just a year after Dell delisted from the stock market, many wondered which direction Dell would take going forward. With the company still offering PCs to consumers, it seems that little has changed at the former powerhouse of personal computing. Listening to the words from Michael Dell, they are a “a cloud hardware provider” and the “Cloud-based infrastructure is the roads and bridges of the 21st century”.
This is a clear sign that Dell is looking strongly at the enterprise portion of the PC market. With new Dell Poweredge servers just announced a few weeks ago, Dell continues to believe in the value of data. Michael Dell stated, “Data is the most valuable resource, and we’re big believers in the idea of the data economy. As there is an enormous increase in the number of devices and machines that’s creating more data, [there’s] a real opportunity to turn that data into insights and better outcomes for students, patients, retailers, manufacturers”.
However, he also stated that, “Dell’s PC division was healthy, as long as the term ‘PC’ included tablets, convertibles, thin clients and all-in-ones”, an argument that we have used for quite some time as well. Dell is developing new devices in this field including new PCs and tablets, and has grown its PC market share in six consecutive quarters. Dell was also the number one in PC monitor shipments in 2013.
When it comes to the Internet of Things, Dell sees this as the logical expansion of the data-centric approach which it is already pursuing. Software platforms using these data will however, mostly come from acquisitions like Quest Software and StatSoft.
The new Dell has a different look and feel and it will be interesting to see how long the historical PC manufacturing model can stand up to the software and data-centric approach Dell has been pursuing recently. This may also be a key question for the whole world to answer. – Norbert Hildebrand
