Dell's consumer sales suffer, Windows 8 touch devices encouraging

[Rick]

With yesterday's report of sagging consumer PC sales, Dell said it's looking to other markets (I.e. enterprise and IT services) to help pick up the slack. Dell has talked about transitioning from consumer PCs to IT business services in the past, but the company seems confident that its business-focused 10-inch Latitude tablet featuring Windows 8 and a swappable battery pack will be an integral part of that plan.

In the meantime though, before Dell's vision of relying on IT services can come to fruition, the PC maker will need to continue selling lots and lots of PCs, laptops, tablets and servers. According to Dell, the company has endured a 23 percent drop in consumer sales just this quarter. The company has also fell short across the board in other market areas, including an 8 percent revenue loss from enterprise customers and an 11 percent drop in public revenue.

So far, Windows 8 may have lent a helping hand, but Dell executives were suspiciously quiet regarding the impact Windows 8 has had on overall PC sales. Rather, execs said they are "encouraged" by initial customer interest in the company's touch-enabled offerings -- that includes both a consumer and business tablet, a consumer convertible and two new all-in-one desktop PCs -- all running Windows 8.

With the launch of Windows 8, we have new tablets and convertibles, including the XPS 10, XPS 12 and Latitude 10. In addition, we have 2 touch-enabled all-in-one desktops. While it's too early to share specific demand numbers, we are encouraged by the initial customer interest in our touch-enabled computing.

Source: Dell Q3 2013 earnings transcript

Dell had promised a new line of tablets back in March, finally delivering on that promise after it began taking pre-orders just a few weeks ago. However, tablets ordered right now aren't likely to ship until mid-December. Base configurations of the XPS 10 (Windows 8 RT) and Latitude 10 (Windows 8 Pro) start at $499 and $649, respectively. 

Will Dell's newfound focus on touch-enabled devices prove to be a huge success? No one can be certain. However, the company believes its user-replaceable battery pack, 10-inch screen, Windows 8 Pro, optional 60WHr battery and enterprise-friendly management tools will set it apart from Android and iOS competitors -- at least in the enterprise world.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/50833-dells-consumer-sales-suffer-windows-8-touch-devices-encouraging.html

 

[Greg S]

Dell, your sales are terrible because your performance computers are way overpriced and you don't even have performance laptops. Alienware is like the windows macbook, they are all about the looks and you pay way too much for them. The XPS line was basically killed and therefore eliminated any chance of professionals buying your multimedia laptops.

 

[Guest]

Dell's consumer sales suffer, Windows 8 touch devices encouraging

lol, take that hp!

 

[emmzo]

I had had a great regard of Dell, until this summer when I have bought an Inspiron laptop. The design probably fitted well a pentium 4, but it was stuffed with an i7, a thing that worried me, but I thought they knew better. Needless to say it overheated like hell so I reduced the power to 70% just to keep it stable. After a couple of blue screens I decided to open it up. Surprise, surprise: the vent system consists in a tiny fan for the graphic card and the mobo chipset has no radiator or any protection whatsoever, the fun part was a forgotten screw left under the keyboard, which occasionally touched the motherboard, thus the BSoDs. Three months later it still works although the paint on the left side, where it overheats chipped away. Consumers sales suffer? No wonder when they sell you overpriced junk.

 

[VitalyT]

It is nice to see IT market comes to its senses, as its starts shaking off the dinosaurs of business. Anybody who's not competitive won't survive in the near future.

DELL is in the wrong niche to be staying live. They sell mid-quality hardware at premium prices, which today just won't do. The only business that still can do it is Apple, but then again, they are the only company who offers premium hardware, to be sure. Anyone else is caving, price-wise, there's no other way.

I can foresee the new market shaping up nicely over the next year, a new world order, one might say

 

[Guest]

I think that with the strength of social media, all large corporations are going to have to re-think the service they give their customers as it becomes easier and easier for us to share our findings and boycott those companies who don't deliver quality goods at fair prices with a good customer service operation. Dell certainly suffers in having a very poor service backup - I will never buy from them again and would advise others against doing so.

 

[Guest]

I think the PC market is saturated, no matter who you buy from, every household has at least one if not more computers. Any computer sold within the past 5 years is still a viable platform for most people (email, web, streaming videos/music, office/libre office, casual games. etc). There is no real need to upgrade. It doesn't really matter who you buy from, that is the way it is. This is why all the companies are excited about tablets, it's not that they will be a better/worse platform, it's that the market is wide open for sales at higher profits.

As far as Dell, on the business side, I think they have improved, there service is very good. I don't buy them as a consumer (I still build my own), so I can't comment on that side of things.

 

[VitalyT]

Yes, PC market widens as people's brain continue shrinking. Not far from the Skynet era.