Have you seen those commercials where the young woman or the mom and her kid go into a big box electronics store looking for a new laptop, and when they go inside, they discover that PCs are tons cheaper than Macs so they end up buying the PC?Well, if those commercials are right, Q3 should be a great quarter for computer makers like Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL).
Dell announced its earnings on Thursday. And while the company announced that net income actually fell 23% from this same time last year, it did manage to beat Wall Street's expectations -- which is always a good sign for a company.
The bigwigs at Dell also said they also expect sales in Q3 and Q4 to grow as the economy recovers. And if consumers really are going for lower costs over higher fashion (as the commercials suggest), Dell may be on to something.
Wade Hansen is an analyst at Learning Markets
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-27-2009 @ 6:17PM
itguy08 said...
Dell makes cheap garbage. Always has, always will. The margins on PC's are razor thin and the cheaper they are the smaller the margins.
Combine that with Dell's garbage quality and you have a recipe for disaster.
I'd never buy a Dell. If I had to buy a PC it would be an HP or Lenovo. Granted I don't do PC's....
8-27-2009 @ 8:23PM
thedude said...
Either you are purposely ignoring the PC/Apple consumer war or you really don't know anything
The ads really aren't geared to sell any one Microsoft based computer, they are simply some light canon fire against the Apple ad propaganda which are fallacious and erroneous attacks against the alleged unreliability of Microsoft PC's
The fact is 94+% of personal computers sold today are Microsoft based and Apple is lucky to get even 5% market share and there are so many varied Microsoft platforms available that it would require a huge uptick in sales across the board for any of them to make a significant profit
As for Dell even though they have a few hundred million satisfied users globally they don't have any agressively unique products to lure anyone who already uses HP, Asus, Sony, Gateway or the myriad other manufacturers to switch to Dell
The truth of the matter is that Apple isn't even in the fight for PC sales numbers and there are so many competitors in the MS PC arena that the winner will be who dominates in China and India
8-27-2009 @ 11:35PM
gconrad said...
Apple is in the fight for the segment of the market that they want, the over $1000 computer. They have 91% of that market. The ads that Microsoft show confirm that ALL they have to offer is price. Ever see one of these commercials talking about a quality product or new innovation? Of course not. There is none. Let the Dell's and Comcrap and whoever else fight for the give a dog a bone computer. Maybe Microsoft can finally finish the huge bug fix that is known as Windows 7.
8-28-2009 @ 4:57AM
krizoitz said...
@thedude: Do you enjoy making stuff up out of nowhere? Apple is lucky to get 5%? Ok sure if you include areas where they don't even compete. Thats like saying BMW isn't in the game because they don't sell as many motorcycles, heavy trucks, and lawnmowers as Honda does. Apple doesn't sell machines to be used as cash registers, or gas pumps, or other commodity uses that Windows PC's are sold for AND COUNTED by people like you as being in the same sector as Mac's. Its a stupid fallacious argument.
The fact is that Apple has been one of the few successful and profitable PC companies because they don't sell low end crap PC's. Apple is MAKING money, setting record profits and its stock continues to climb. Apple's market cap is FIVE times what Dell's is.
As for the idea that Apple's commercials are fabrications. Um, do you know how many viruses there are for OS X? Zero. Its been out for about 10 years now and in that time no one has managed to write a virus for it. Know how many viruses have been written that affect Windows in that same time period? THOUSANDS. Malware? Doesn't exist on a Mac. I don't have to download some stupid piece of software to clean up all the crap like I do on my Windows machine (yes I use windows too.)
Do PC's have advantages? Sure, you have a wider selection and more customization. You also have to deal with more driver headaches and incompatibilities. You can game better on a PC. You spend less time maintaining your Mac though. They also tend to last longer, and successive versions of OS X run FASTER than previous versions, even on most older equipment, as opposed to slower like Windows does.
Its great that Windows 7 is finally cleaning up the mess that was Vista, its certainly a step up. But it hasn't caught up to the polish, power, and ease of use that Mac OS X offers.
Windows PC's will continue to dominate in corporate America, there's no doubt about that. IT geeks need to keep their jobs after all, and Mac's don't require as much maintenance. But more and more people are buying Mac's especially for the laptop market and especially younger people. To dismiss Apple is to demonstrate a severe lack of awareness of the way the market works.
And who knows, if Apple WANTED to compete as broadly as Dell or HP do, maybe they would have greater market share, but frankly they don't need to to be successful. Better in their view to continue to sell quality products, then scrape by selling bottom of the line PC's made from inferior parts.