Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) made quite a few changes in 2007. Its founder, Michael Dell, came back to lead the company, it entered the retail market in the U.S. in a large way and it began introducing more appealing laptop PC designs to cater to the consumers who love choice. As a result of all these changes, CEO Michael Dell is now predicting a strong second half for Dell in 2008.

Dell mentioned that the company he founded would "have a big second half" based on numbers so far in 2008. Dell's consumer business sales rose 20% for the Q1 period ended on May 2, and Dell is predicting even stronger growth for the current quarter and the Q3 period as well.

Based on all the strong moves Dell made in 2007 and into the last fiscal period, he could be right. Dell's retail partnering in the U.S. and with Gome in China is going to mean some wicked business the rest of this year. However, competitor Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) recently unveiled one of the largest product refreshes in its history and Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) just moved past Taiwan's Acer to take the third spot in U.S. PC sales. It won't be a simple task for Dell to keep this segment growing like it has predicted.

And that's just the consumer PC business. Dell's efforts in the large market area that includes Russia, China, India and others grew at a 58% pace in the company's Q1 period, and a grouping of emerging markets accounted for 12% of Dell's sales in the Q1 period as well. Add that to its push into a huge "cloud computing" marketing towards customers who order hundreds or even thousands of servers at a time, and Dell has many tricks up its sleeve to keep things growing at a decent pace.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) announced yesterday that the company will finally bring last year's layoff announcement to its customer service operations in a few contact centers. Over 900 employees in its Canadian Ottawa operations will be let go, along with approximately 300 in Dell's Oklahoma City customer contact center as well. In the case of the Oklahoma call center, consumer sales and consumer technical support are being hit hard, but the center will also take on more business technical support responsibilities.

Today is the last day of Dell's fiscal year, and it's a time when the company wants to take charges on its books instead of carrying them over to the new fiscal year, so the timing of these layoffs makes sense financially. However, the company was trumpeting growing both contact centers just over a year ago -- and now headcount reductions are happening. My, how a year can change things drastically, yes?

The company still has a long way to go in order to catch market leader Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which passed it last year as the world's largest computer maker. Dell responded by bringing in a bunch of new blood and by entering the retail market as quickly as possible. Perhaps when it bolsters sales back up, it may need to support those new customers with customer service employee re-hirings. Until then, it's just another zany day in the tech worker layoff arena.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) will be closing all 140 "Dell Direct" retail kiosks in malls and shipping centers across the U.S. within a matter of days to more acutely focus sales in high-volume retailers like Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT). This is a good move, as I've always wondered if the point of Dell's mall kiosks was just a branding and mind share technique more than a sales channel.

Dell's kiosks employees will be given a severance package and outplacement assistance as the world's second-largest PC maker closes down these shops by perhaps this weekend. The kiosks have been around since 2002 as a way for Dell customers to get a feel for its products before calling or ordering on the Dell website.

In a sense, these Dell Direct kiosks were what the computer maker needed in a larger ways years ago -- the ability for retail consumers to "look and feel" its products before buying sight unseen from a website. Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) leapfrogged past Dell in 2007 as the world's largest computer maker squarely on the back of strong consumer retail sales, and especially in the laptop PC segment where consumers prefer to see the product in person before buying. Good move, Dell -- but this retail shift should have come at the end of 2006 instead. Better late than never, eh?

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has been on a tear in the last six months when it comes to partnering with global retailers for its consumer PC products, and it has just announced yet another partnership. This time, European retail giant Tesco will make Dell's laptop and desktop PC products available in its stores this month. Currently, Tesco has retail operations in Asia and Europe.

Is Dell desperate? It's joined with so many larger retailers since this past autumn that it's hard not to think that the world's second-largest PC maker is trying desperately to make up for lost time by entering any and all retailers it can. In the U.S., that list includes Wal-Mart (NSYE: WMT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and Staples (NASDAQ: SPLS). Those are among the three largest companies in their respective industries (discount retail, consumer electronics, and office/home business supplies).

Dell's Inspiron and XPS products will be the consumer product lines available in Tesco stores, mainly in the UK. However, Tesco outlets in Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia will also carry Dell's two consumer PC lines. With Dell having retail partners in Europe, Asia (China's Gome) and the U.S., the company's retail sales efforts will be heavily scrutinized in 2008 as it competes on the shelf against retail heavyweights like Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Taiwan's Acer, which also includes the Gateway brand.

In doing some last-minute Christmas shopping this weekend, I was quite surprised to find three Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) laptop computer systems on display at a local Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) location. The Inspiron 1420 and 1421 looked like they had just been unboxed and put on display. No pricing or specification information was on display yet, which was the first clue.

Add that to Dell systems not being located on Best Buy's website and one has to wonder how these found their way to Best Buy shelves so quickly. After all, the power consumer electronics retailer and the comeback PC manufacturer just announced a partnership two weeks ago. Did Dell think that it could somehow boost last-minute Christmas laptop sales by having a few laptops on display?

It's odd to see a major retail partnership announced and almost immediately followed by having new products on shelves -- and especially at the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer. One thing these newer Dell laptop systems had going for them -- they were all finished in a very bright silver color -- in stark contrast to the charcoal and black of most consumer-level laptop PCs being displayed.

Which competitive laptop PC systems were shoved aside for the display of these Dell systems? Hard to say, since there were HP laptop systems not two feet from these new Dell systems. When these are properly displayed and priced, I'll be digging into whether Dell can really compete on the retail shelf when it comes to price (remember, laptop PCs are commodities to most retailer consumers). After just having configured a Dell Inspiron 1420 with the exact options of a HP Pavilion laptop (comparable processors, 14.1" screen, hard drive size and RAM size) available from Best Buy today, Dell's comparable offering -- direct from the Dell website -- was priced over $230 more. That won't fly in the consumer's mind, right? Stay tuned early next year as this becomes more closely watched.

In a move that was not totally unexpected, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) announced today that it would soon be selling its desktop and laptop PCs at the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy (NYSE: BBY). Dell has taken its computer products into Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) and Staples (NYSE: SPLS) in recent months, and an introduction into Best Buy was inevitable.

And so the fight begins -- Dell's systems will be put right next to Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) systems on the same floor, where pricing and presentation will be neck-and-neck. It's been over fifteen years since Dell has been on the shelves of Best Buy, so history is repeating itself. Dell's desperation to return to its former sales and profit glory is seeing no bounds in 2007, with the computer giant re-entering retail in a large way and making acquisitions left and right -- reversing over a decade of not doing either.

Dell will be forced to compete directly with Hewlett-Packard and a resurgent Acer on shelves now. With its cost competitiveness pretty much duplicated by the competition, the words commodity business will ring ever truer on the tongues of PC industry watchers with Dell's latest retail move. Can Dell really take on such a massive move to retail so quickly without disrupting the business model it built on the back of a direct-only customer relationship? Even if not, the announcement alone should gain from applause from Wall Street.

While Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) continues to make up lost ground to competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) in terms of overall sales, one area that it's attacking in seemingly full force is the retail sector. Over the summer, Dell joined up with retailers Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLS) as an entry point to get its nameplate in front of U.S. retail consumers who might not know that Dell existed outside of a website. That's because until then Dell really didn't exist outside of its direct-sales phone and web order channels when it came to the consumer market.

Dell is now eying the European retail market, and has announced yesterday a partnership with European retail giant Carrefour. Carrefour will act as the sole distributor (at this time) for Dell's consumer PC sales efforts in Europe. To start off, Dell will begin selling PCs in four European countries next year, although those countries are unknown at this time.

Dell has seen middling success in the European consumer market and this new partnership should help its efforts greatly as it cracks into yet another retail market. Dell has a lot of catching up to do in order to bolster its retail presence and image among consumers, as one of Hewlett-Packard's main reasons for such a splendid quarter last week was due to the strength of its retail laptop systems.

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) will begin selling its PCs in Staples (NASDAQ: SPLS) office supply stores as of November 11, according to both companies. The PC lineup will include Dell's Inspiron 530 desktop PCs and two versions of Inspiron notebooks, as well as supplemental Dell products like all-in-one printers and flat-panel LCD monitors.

Will this help Dell have a strong holiday sales push? Possibly, but it's doubtful.

Dell's deal with Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) was grand when it was announced, but since the company has given no specific performance figures on how well its retail effort in Wal-Mart has fared, it's hard to gauge how customers will react to Dell's brand in Staples. Does Staples even sell many PCs?

Dell systems in Wal-Mart stores reflected an aura of older or overstocked parts assembled into PCs and dumped into Wal-Mart's parking lot, rather than any specific computer build made for the retailer, and I'm not so sure customers have responded in droves to buy Dells inside those local Wal-Mart stores. Not enough time has gone by, though, so I could be jumping the gun here.

Dell's latest partnership will put its PCs and products into 1,400 more retail locations, which will instantly give it more exposure to the American buying public. Perhaps that is what Dell is going after here -- mass exposure (which brings a certain amount of purchases) instead of strategic, slower partnerships. Dell is expected to strike more retail agreements in the next 12 to 18 months, but not without challenges, according to Robert W. Baird analyst Daniel Renouard. Dell is now significantly behind competitor Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) in overall computer system sales, and these retail efforts are considered by many to be a desperate attempt to win back market share. Right now, it's too early to attribute any success or failure in that effort.

What is Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) up to? The PC maker is set to report earnings next week on the May 31, and I'll be liveblogging the event with eager fingers. Is the company set to turn in another dismal quarter amid market share losses in the consumer PC market? Possibly. Is the company ready to make a comeback? It needs to, desperately. Is Dell headed for retail again, almost two decades after leaving that space to only sell direct? All signs point to yes.

These are different times and more customers want to physically see what they are buying instead of having a few images on a website representing that large purchase. Dell has always competed with the retailers it is about to partner with, and so how it handles this will be interesting. Would consumer electronics leader Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) want yet another PC vendor on its shelves? Who knows. Once Dell enters retail, how will it compete? On price? Retail is quite a different beast than direct sales, and Dell may need to cut prices to lure more customers. Competition, most notably Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which already has a very strong retail presence, could easily match these price cuts.