On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he’d do if he was in charge of Apple Computer, Dell founder and then CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly, “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
A little more than a month later, on November 10, 1997, new Apple Interim CEO (iCEO) Steve Jobs responded, speaking in front of an image of Michael Dell’s bulls-eye covered face, “We’re coming after you, you’re in our sights.”
On January 13, 2006, after a little more than eight years of hard work, Apple Inc. passed Dell, Inc. in market value, $72.13 billion vs. $71.97 billion at market close, respectively.
On July 27, 2007, Apple’s value doubled that of Dell’s, $127.81 billion vs. $63.65 billion, respectively.
On December 6, 2007, Apple’s market value passed 3 times that of Dell’s, $165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion, respectively.
Today in NASDAQ trading, Apple rose $6.05, or 3.48%, to close at $180.00 and the company’s market value passed 4 times that of Dell’s, $158.66 billion vs. $38.97 billion.
Got any snappy retorts now, Mr. Dell? What’s that, cat got your tongue?
AAPL and DELL quotes via NASDAQ are here.
Rich Apple Person writes, “Bill needs to bet back to the MS campus and lease an office somewhere away from [Redmond] where a bunch of developers can go off site and reinvent Windows so that’s it cool again.” Well, were Gates both technically brilliant and a first rate visionary, MAYBE he’d have a shot. But he’s neither, despite his former “Chief Technology Architect” position.
As to the “Rich” part, perhaps had I not been burned during the 2000 tech meltdown I wouldn’t be so reticent in my Apple investments. I did pick up a few more shares two months ago – at ~$120. What a ride it’s been since! Joy mixed with regret (that I didn’t buy MORE).
Mikey, How do like them Apples?
Thanks Steve, just thanks.
Ballmer: Here’s a chair Mickey, now go toss it
Mickey: **aahhrumph**
Ballmer: Wakes up after being out for 2 hours; You idiot, across the room not at me!!
This type of story (ad nauseum it seems) is getting very old. Who gives a rat’s ass about Dell. Market dynamics will decide their fate. In the meantime, continuing the 3rd grade behavior evident in this thread is asinine.
Can we now move on to something positive, like where Apple seems to be putting its energy over the next 6 months or so? Sheesh.
hilarious……. and now he thinks he can do what jobs did.
Get over yourself and your supercilious attitude, “It’s About TIme.” If you don’t like the WELL-DESERVED contumely heaped upon Mr. Dell by us MDN’ers, then go somewhere else where more erudite topics are discussed at all times.
As for me, give me the next article announcing AAPL’s valuation at 5 X DELL! Can’t wait.
@ It’s About Time
Dredging up that quote never gets tiring! Especially when certain milestones are reached.
It’s always good for a laugh because it was such an absolutely absurd suggestion.
Love great Apple history still in the making… btw MDN, to reflect the story, don’t just paste his mug big & in such vibrant colors, we rather see his face pale & bulleye covered. Do us all a favor will you?
Sounds like Apple has a buying opportunity with the $20 billion is cash. They could make the return of investment in 3 to 4 years and take a good chunk of all those business accounts in one foul swoop. Mike Dell will become CEB Chief Excutive Biatch!
Pronouncer – The word is “supercilious”
@Randian – Could you use it in a sentence please?
Pronouncer – Why yes…”Your girlfriend thought you looked supercilious the first and only time she saw you without pants”.
Just in case any of you were wondering it was Ted Waite who started Gateway to answer
@ It’s About Time
I’d tend to agree with the rest of the folks here. Dell started this with his comments, and so it is only fitting that he be ridiculed in some manner.
Problem with Dell is, the only thing they could innovate is a cheaper manufacturing process. Squeezing a few pennies a step at a time out of the cost only paints you into a corner. Without anything else to offer your buyers **cough** an OS **cough cough** then you have nothing to truly differentiate yourself from your competition.
He looks like the test tube love child of Fred Savage and Richard Kind.
We all make mistakes …
Sometimes, some of us make bigger, costlier mistakes.
I’m one of those who can NEVER get enough of this story, either. And yes, karma IS a bitch!
The remarkable thing about this saga is when you pay attention to Dell’s numbers just since January 2006. I mean, we can all place these dates in “Apple time”.
In January ’06 Macworld had just ended with the surprise announcement of Intel chips already in the 15″ MacBook Pro, the Mac Mini, and the iMac. At that moment, Dell was basically at $72B marketcap.
July 27, 2007 is a year and a half later and was two days before the iPhone dropped. Dell’s marketcap had also dropped to about $64B.
December 6, 2007 is right at the peak of Apple’s fiscal 1st quarter (traditionally their strongest), during the holiday season. It was NOT a merry Christmas for Dell; they had dropped again to about $55B.
Which brings us to today, May 1st, 2008, where we see that Dell has sunk like a rock to basically $39B!
No WONDER they’re firing people and shutting down facilities! I’m like everybody else: it’s bad for the employees to get thrown out in the street, especially in THIS economy, essentially because their leadership hired them into a company that was always a one-trick-pony.
As I’ve said here before, once a one-trick-pony has done their trick, it’s time to go home; there’s nothing else to see.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
Its because DELL spends all of its extra money on tech support.
‘He looks like the test tube love child of Fred Savage and Richard Kind.’
He totally does. With maybe a drop of Casey Kasem thrown in. This doesn’t look good, Scoob’!
What you guys are saying has hurt me so very much. In fact I cried all the way to the bank.
Plus, have you wankers seen my wife? Ha…Ha…Ha…
OBTW…I wrote this on my daughter’s iPhone…
but your daughter has seen my wanker.
Yeah, she was telling me about that guy who stuck it in one of our goats.
I saw those goat pictures. You call that a wanker?
Dude, you need a new wanker.
Stop picking on Mike.
He was absolutely correct he was asked if he was in charge what would he do and if he was in charge that would have been the correct answer. Fortunately Steve was in charge and the rest is history.
@it’s about time:
After taking crap from Windows people for years about how the CLI (command line interface) was sooooo superior to the GUI (graphic user interface) and listening to IT wannabe gods who bad mouthed the Mac (only to have their own argument dissolve when I asked them about the last time they were on one) and the Zune Thang type behaviour you see from these bozos you have to come to realize that stooping down to using 3rd grade behaviour is about as low as you need to go to convince them that they won’t pass kindergarten with that type of behaviour.
Oh yeah, so it will go on, ad nauseum. After all if they dished that crap out for years, they should be able to take it back for a few years.
Except that I doubt olde Mickey Dell will have anything to sell or give back to the shareholders by the time it is all through.
After all, the Gates of Dell will never prevail.
And that is a similar story that has been going on (perhaps ad nauseum) for over 2000 years.
Not sure of the exact figures but taking historical spit adjusted prices from 6 Oct 97 and today’s close here is what we have.
Apple 1997 4.8B Today 158B
Dell 1997 25B Today 39B
MSFT 1997 133B Today 273B
Say what you want Dell is defeated in my books.
Cheers