If they are so cheap and inexpensive to purchase why in hell are their profits down, and why are they laying off 8,000 Americans?
Because even though components are much cheaper now all the big prebuilt companies are fighting a price war to drive their competitors out of bussiness.
Prices fall but quality suffers and even then they have to squeeze to get any margin out of those things at all. Go through a mock order on dell and see how they push accessories, ink, and service plans and the like. That’s the only way they make money. I wouldn’t be suprised if you bought a prebuilt box barebones with nothing else dell would be losing a significant amount of money.
If they are so cheap and inexpensive to purchase why in hell are their profits down, and why are they laying off 8,000 Americans?
Because they rode the wave up at a time when everyone was buying a computer and now they’re riding it down in a “replacement”/”upgrade” market.
The article doesn't say where the 8,000 layoffs are geographically. Some, even many, *could be* at the off shore call centers.
On their low-end PCs, Dell loses money on each unit sold. That is part of their business model and market share strategy.
Another reason - providing customer support for Microsoft Windows and Linux problems is very expensive.
On the rare occasions when I've call Apple for customer support, the Apple person was always an American - usually in Texas.