Dell quiet on future plans, but investors want to know

Dell Inc.'s (NASDAQ: DELL) rather spectacular fall from grace in its most recent fiscal year is now a matter of record. I am fascinated by how such a PC powerhouse like Dell could stumble so badly. I'll cross off the battery recall fiasco since that was way more Sony's fault than Dell's (even though Dell took the heat). That consumer recall gets a lot of press, but it has nothing to do with Dell other than a black eye (and a loss of trust on Dell's QC for consumer products). But when Dell did not even have anything beyond a press release for its latest quarterly results, its reputation became further sullied.

Let's get into accounting irregularities that have required an SEC investigation, allegations of illegal $1 billion per quarter kickbacks to Intel beyond "marketing rebates," the loss of interesting consumer design, retail losses to Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ), and Dell's customer support quality levels which are only slowing improving. Which to take first? Well, since most of these have been talked about ad infinitum already, I'll let the critics speak for themselves. In a nutshell: Dell has had massive problems recently and all the changes in upper management in the last 45 days or so are meant to help fix that. Company founder Michael Dell is back at the daily helm along with a bunch of new blood. It will take time though -- there is no overnight turnaround here.

But, how is Dell going to sell more products and grow margins? It saw a 17% decline in desktop PC shipments for its last quarter and only a 2% increase in notebook shipments -- very poor performance. Meanwhile, HP is apparently selling everything it can on retail shelves -- somewhere Dell is nowhere to be found, of course. What are Dell's most profitable PCs? Are they in the consumer or business segment? If they're in the consumer segment, Dell needs to be more than a phone call or website away -- retail will be almost required, I would think. If you are a Dell investor, do you agree?