Wow, the PC sales industry is no place to be in a recession. Dell just brought out some really dismal numbers today.
The Round Rock, Texas, computer maker's top line missed analysts' average estimate by about $750 million -- the upside being that three months ago Dell missed revenue estimates by $1 billion.
The good thing is that they are still making money. The only problem is that it is about half as much as they did last year.
Dell's fourth-quarter profit fell to $351 million, or 18 cents a share, from $679 million, or 31 cents a share, a year earlier. The latest quarter included $134 million in "organizational effectiveness" (read: job cuts) and $143 million related to stock-based compensation.
I can see things looking up for Dell once people start to upgrade their machines to run Windows 7 if they dodged Vista. The only problem is that profit margins on laptops may never recover due to the rise of the really cheap Netbook.
So they have become a competitor with China in the race to who can have the thinnest margin of them all. HP can at least fall back to their leadership in printers (which are still needed,) services, and servers (even though virtualization is constraining the revenue in that space.) Unless they reinvent themselves Dells' glory days are long past.
So they have become a competitor with China in the race to who can have the thinnest margin of them all. HP can at least fall back to their leadership in printers (which are still needed,) services, and servers (even though virtualization is constraining the revenue in that space.) Unless they reinvent themselves Dells' glory days are long past.
No comments:
Post a Comment