Posted on 10/31/2005 7:38:05 PM PST by HAL9000
San Francisco, California (AHN) - Dell Inc., posted preliminary third-quarter earnings below expectations after weak sales in U.S. and Britain. Dell also says it would take charges of about $450 million in the third quarter for costs of repairing some computer systems for customers, cutting jobs and restructuring units.The company said it expects to report revenue of $13.9 billion, below its earlier forecast of $14.1 billion to $14.5 billion and analysts' $14.3 billion estimate. U.S. consumer and British unit sales "fell short of expectations," Dell says.
"They were seeing some weakness in desktop and strength in notebooks, but not enough to offset the weakness in desktop," analyst Shaw Wu of American Technology Research says after Dell's announcement. "Dell's problem is that it's not differentiated enough" from competitors.
Computers? Who needs them?! That's why.
Computers are quickly becoming commodity items. Name brands don't mean much anymore.
Wake me when they start selling AMD. Then maybe I'll buy one.
i dunno
someone out there is selling apples....
have you driven a g5 lately?
or, more specifically, moving the units to India.
I tried my best to buy my third system from Dell a couple of months ago. I speced out a 3000 buck system on their website, I went to confirm it and have the funds withdrawn from my checking account as I had twice before and they had dropped the option. They insisted that I apply for their in-house financing or pay with a credit card. I never make this type of purchase on credit. They lost the sale and I went with HP. In the end I am very happy with the system I did pay cash for.
Maybe they should carry AMD processors.
They have a 24 inch flat screen monitor that I would like to have. (Are you listening Santa?)
It costs $1300 and I don't think I have been THAT good a boy this year.
It surprises me none that you configured a 3000 system.
Anyone else try to spec out a system on Dell's website? It's hard to avoid the inundation of upselling. Brings new meaning to "nickel-and-diming" when your $399 promo computer somehow costs $1400 after a few upgrades.
Note that while I'm critical of Dell, I'm typing this on a brand new Dell laptop. I've got nothing against the company.
I am pretty positive that the increased sales of offering AMDs would be about the same as if they offered Linux preinstalled.
The hard-core holdouts would buy a few hundred to a couple thousand, and the rest of the consuming public wouldn't care just like they don't now. Meanwhile, Dell may have lost out of millions from lucrative contracts with Intel or Microsoft promising only their products (I have no knowledge that such an agreement exists, just assuming).
You must know about Tolstoy's first choice title for his book, "War And Peace".
"War, Who Needs It?"
Frequent flyer miles!
For $3000, I hope so! That's quite a system, no matter who makes it. Good luck with your purchase, and thanks for helping the economy!
Mine will be shipping soon. I can barely wait.
Apple is the king of the computer makers these days. People are finally waking up to the superiority of OS X. When the Intel Macs hit the street, Apple is going to be unstoppable.
Unless other tier 1 PC makers show similar weakness soon,
we have to assume this is a Dell-specific problem.
And comments already posted suggest why:
Dell is Intel-only,
and Intel's posture has been falling behind AMD in raw
performance and price-performance (offset somewhat by the
unique deal Dell gets from them). Recent Intel CPU
intros (e.g. Paxville) are truly awful compared to AMD.
And there isn't much Dell can do about it. If they take
even one AMD part now, they screw the Intel deal, and
their balance sheet takes a hit. And AMD won't have enough
FAB capacity until late 2006 to handle the volume Dell
would really have to take.
I haven't seen any industry figures, but HP desktops seems to be a huge seller. The bank I worked at for the last 2-1/2 years replaced all their desktops with HP systems. Right now, I'm working on a 6+ month project doing the same for a national insurance company. They went with the HP 7100 as well.
A few years ago that could have been an incentive for me but I no longer travel.
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