It's no surprise that Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) wants to catch back up to rival Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) as the world's leading PC vendor. With those bragging rights come contracts and deals, among other things, and right now, HP is hot, while Dell is not.

So, even as HP continues to sell very well in the U.S. retail sector while Dell is just beginning to test the waters, the world's second-largest PC maker is taking its market share action plan to Japan, looking to overtake NEC as Japan's top PC vendor. In a non-surprise, the company wants to do it by offering a good product selection at retail stores and with custom colors on its products (my guess: laptop PCs only).

Right now, the bulk of Dell's sales in Japan come from corporate customers, similar to how its business has been in the last half-decade in the U.S. market. But, with those sales stagnating a bit and with more consumers venturing into retail stores to buy instead of clicking around a website, Dell had no choice but to attack Japanese sales with a different approach. Sadly, it's years overdue. Dell is quite a bit behind the curve in terms of how to balance its corporate sales versus consumer sales (globally), but at least it's making the effort now instead of 2008.

Dell was so successful with direct sales -- to consumers and corporate customers -- that it apparently let arrogance rule the day, as competitors like HP and Taiwan's Acer were racking up huge numbers in retail stores, where Dell did not even exist. Compound that problem with the fact that laptop PCs are killing desktop PCs in sales in almost every market, and one could see why Dell fell behind. Looking at a standard Dell laptop PC in 2006 was as boring as burnt toast, even as the competition was getting stylish laptop systems into the hands of retailers everywhere. Dell did pass Fujitsu as Japan's second-larger PC vendor in the quarter ended June 30, but stepping ahead of NEC will be no easy task.