“Dell plans to cut more jobs than the 8,800 it had targeted as it seeks to reduce expenses by at least $3 billion annually by 2011, Chief Executive Michael Dell said Thursday,” Reuters reports.
Dell, “will ‘go past’ the job-cutting goal it first announced in May, 2007, the CEO said near company headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, at the company’s first analyst meeting since 2005,” Reuters reports. “‘We are not satisfied with the current state of affairs and are on a mission to fix it,’ said Dell, 43. ‘Every area of the company is being pursued’ for cost cuts.”
MacDailyNews Take: Bad luck with that, Mikey. Hey, here’s an idea: why don’t you just shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders (while you still have money to give)?
Reuters continues, “The company on Monday said it planned to close its desktop PC manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas, and eliminate about 900 jobs there.”
“Michael Dell said the company will end the current year with lower operating expenses than in the previous year. He said job cuts are continuing in the current quarter after 5,500 positions were eliminated, for a net reduction so far of 3,200 jobs when counting positions added through acquisitions,” Reuters reports.
Full article here.
Jim Kerstetter blogs for CNET, “Dell’s issues go a lot deeper than managing expenses, and adding a line of nicely colored laptops and a new ad agency, as Dell has done, won’t make them go away. In short, Dell just isn’t cool anymore, and it probably never was.”
MacDailyNews Take: Forget “probably,” Dell definitely never was cool.
Kerstetter continues, “Tech pundit Nicholas Carr predicted Dell’s current predicament more than three years ago… For people who want to understand how the computer industry works (and how in many ways it’s not all that different from other industries), the column he wrote for BusinessWeek should be required reading. Carr compared Dell’s run in the 1990s to Ford’s early success in the auto industry.”
“Ford was out-innovated by General Motors, which understood consumers wanted style, taste, something that represented who they are. That’s something Apple has always understood about its customers. Even HP got a handle on this several years ago. By 1926, GM’s Chevrolet was taking market share away from Ford. By 1927, Chevys were outselling the Model T,” Kerstette writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Ford vs. GM, Ford vs. GM… hmmm, now where have we heard that before? Oh, yeah, we wrote it first. Three weeks before Carr. He took it in some new directions and applied it to Dell instead of Microsoft, but, of course, he did have the luxury of those three weeks. We guess it’s nice to know he was reading us at least as far back as January 2005. Yeah, yeah, we know: it was all just a coincidence.
Full article here.
Don Reisinger blogs for CNET, “How can a company that sat atop the entire computing industry for so long become a shadow of its former self in just two years? Is it that Dell has had a string of bad luck or did Hewlett-Packard, Acer and the rest finally find a way to take the company down?”
Reisinger writes, “Sadly, it looks like the latter.”
MacDailyNews Take: What’s sad about it?
Reisinger continues, “At this point, Dell is in deep trouble. The company’s stock price has plummeted in the past six months and, although it’s turning a profit each quarter of well over $200 million, its practice of selling computers just doesn’t work anymore.”
MacDailyNews Take: Perhaps our April Fool’s Day article wasn’t a joke, but instead a news item from the future?
“The company may be able to turn things around in retail outlets, but the computer industry has quickly become a commoditized business where a Dell desktop is the same as an equally equipped HP computer. Realizing this, a price war has emerged and so far, Dell has come out on the losing end in many of these battles, which tells you exactly why it’s trying to reduce overhead and maintain costs at a far more manageable level,” Reisinger writes.
“Sadly, there’s not much more Dell can do. In an environment where margins are extremely low and companies are forced to find innovative ways to entice customers, Dell is fighting an uphill battle. And although its revenue has grown, its growth has slowed to a crawl and things may get worse if they ever get better,” Reisinger writes. “Trouble is on the horizon for Dell, and if you ask me, that’s a sad development.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again with the “sad.” Who the hell is sad? We’re having a freakin’ party here! What, does Reisinger still own shares in that mess? If so, we can see the “sad.” Otherwise, who cares? Another dime-a-dozen PC box assembler will take Dell’s place, as has happened many, many, many times before. Only the names change.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “amex” for the heads up.]
Finally, a first post.
Mr. Dell, my son is a Mac user and will never ever buy one of your computers.
Hopefully his generation will undo the damage ours inflicted.
If CHEAP is cool, then Dell WAS cool. Damn cool.
Dell is cool… like stepping in a pile of dogshit cool.
Cheesy PeeSea generic DOSBox™ stuffers are a dime a dozen… maybe less. They come and go like the tides. Dell was lucky enough to outlast quite a few of them. But it’s time for Dell to go.
Be careful that the door doesn’t hit you on the way out Mikey. Maybe Ballmer will give you a ride to the shelter…
@ Alex’s Dad
Hilarious, and brilliant. Hilarious and brilliant. Thumbs up.
There will be a special place in Hell for Michael Dell…right next to Bill Gates.
I still have my old Dell Inspiron 3200, upgraded with a PII-400mhz processor, running Windows 2000. It’s my Dreamcast disk-burning machine, since I can’t burn multisession DC cds on the Mac when I need to test my code. Paid $3200 for it back in 1998, a few months before I bought my Wallstreet and gave it to my now ex-wife. The damn thing has never given me trouble, but then again, the same laptop (TS30H) was released by ten different companies under different names.
From what I hear, Dell hasn’t put out a reliable machine since then. But I wouldn’t know. I’ve used Macs ever since…
Watch out, MDN’ers . . . the bleeding hearts of recent posts are just lying in wait to tear you all a new one for your lack of empathy here. “Boo hoo, sob sob, people are losing their precious jobs; won’t someone please think of the children?!” they’ll cry in a most lamentable chorus. You’d better cut and run now, folks, and apologize for anything harsh or derogatory you may have ever said or written about Mr. Dell and his beleaguered employees.
osborne pc
Inspiron:
nagram:
InPrison
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You know.. as much as we all hate Dell, and want nothing more than for the company’s namesake to get what is coming to him… it is sad that so many people are loosing their jobs. The economy is already weak, the job market is tight, and unemployment rising is not going to put us on the road to recovery.
the cbs station, keye ch 42, here in austin, tx did a story about how dell is laying off worker yet at the same time preserving millions in perks for its senior staff.
http://www.keyetv.com/content/news/topnews/story.aspx?content_id=b5ac27a6-6d43-4d27-9324-2122b10ac3a9
they are giving back to stock holders, the execs at the top.
I bet they will re-hire that spaced out DELL Dude and do their own commercials. “Hi I’m a DELL and Hi I’m HELL for buying a DELL”
The best line I’ve read some writer wrote about Dell years ago was to this effect – ‘Dell try to present itself as innovative but really is just a bottom feeder.’ What do they really invent, besides armstronging city governments to pay for their plants and hiring low wage. They are the Walmart of PC makers. Students 10 years ago bought them because they’re cheap, and you get what you pay for. There’re 1000 companies in Asia that can take over Dell and make better PCs cheaper. The real sad truth is all this economic downturn and raiding of tax dollars for the execs/shareholders are predicted 3 years ago when Dell came knocking at your local community to build a plant. And moron local officials would eagerly kneel down to kiss their feet. Dell is nowhere close to Gates. Dell is irrelevant.
Piss on Dell.
Pile of their ‘going out of business sale’ crap in one, huge unmarked grave.
That uppity little shit Michael Dell has it coming.
I haven’t had a very good experience with Dell, but it sucks that they are having problems. It’s not kid games that so many are losing their jobs, and those jobs are most likely going to overseas assemblers.
i hope they go bust and some chinese conglomerate buy whats left and turn dell into a dog food factory
fsck mike dell – asshole of the century
Dell used to have a good reputation and low prices. The reputation took a hit when they used less reliable parts. Also, their ‘cheap’ end of the line is hyped as much as their high end, causing consumers to get burned when they can’t run games or Vista properly or at all. They should have made it clear you’re buying crap or limited goods.
But not only did Dell do something bad, but their competitors have been doing something good. HP has a good reputation and is also moving to ‘Cheapside’. In 5 years HP’s reputation will also be in tatters if this new low-end becomes limited and unreliable.
There is a market for cheap, risky goods for those who are price adverse and willing to take the risk. I am glad that Apple has not gone for this market (Mac IIvi, IIvx were exceptions), as even the Mac Mini is very reliable.
Atari
Have a look at BurnAgain for multi-session disks without multiple volumes
…”and give it back to the shareholders”…
@ Randian,
Be funny if you had any idea what you were talking about… How much tech experience are you drawing from? I bet you have a whopping 10, maybe 15, years…wow! Let’s all bow down…cuz this guy knows that the Wintel folks play fair. Blow me dude! Take your arkane Windoze skills and get a phat job in the Ukraine (no offense to the lovely Ukrainians! I love the Ukraine! Just seemed slightly less old school than the U.S.S.R. (which, obviously, it is!) So, again, good luck with those skills ya douche!