“It’s fitting that 2005 should be the year Dell is named America’s Most Admired Company. The computer maker turns 21 years old in May, and as it attains the age of majority, it has grown from an industry curio into one of the nation’s most prominent and respected corporations,” Andy Serwer writes for Fortune.
“But Michael Dell has been playing the role of youthful renegade for a long time now, and he’s clearly a little uncomfortable when I break the news in his offices in Round Rock, Texas, that his company is at the top of FORTUNE’s list. He thinks about it for a second and then flashes his ‘I can eat nails’ grin. ‘I know my mom would be proud, but I certainly don’t feel like we’re the most admired company,’ he says,” Serwer writes. “Just to give you an idea of how far Dell has come: 21 years ago (when the company was founded) IBM and HP were voted No. 1 and No. 3 respectively on America’s Most Admired Companies list. (At that point if you had asked the voters, “What’s a Dell?” they probably would have told you it was a small, secluded, wooded valley.) As for PC market share, of course, Dell wasn’t on the radar screen, while Commodore, with about $1.1 billion in PC sales, was the industry leader with a 27% U.S. market share. IBM was No. 2, and Apple and Tandy came in at No. 3 and No. 4.”
“Could Dell ever come up with a PlayStation or an iPod on its own? ‘We could. But I don’t think that’s our strategy,’ Dell CEO Kevin Rollins insists. ‘I think there are those who come up with those products, but frankly, as far as technologies that actually help customers, those two products are a one-product event. You can’t just have one product and then say you’re the innovative leader of the world. I’m a big admirer of everything [Apple’s] done. It’s phenomenal. But then to say it’s the world-beating wonder of forever? No, it’s not.’ Hmm, sounds like a case of Apple envy, which is understandable these days. While Dell is almost six times more profitable than Apple, its market cap is only three times bigger. Of course, thanks to the iPod, Apple is growing faster right now, and Steve Jobs’ company has all the buzz,” Serwer writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dell’s CEO is turning out to be potentially nuttier than even Microsoft’s CEO/Dancing Monkey, Steve Ballmer. Rollins needs to learn how to keep his mouth shut and stop oozing jealousy towards Apple. Dell should be plenty worried about Apple and the Mac platform’s capacity to take away business from Dell and these continued comments by Rollins show his fear. Dell should also be worried about China, which could soon potentially eat commodity Wintel box assemblers like Dell for lunch, but that’s another story.
Fortune’s survey asked businesspeople to vote for 10 companies that they admired most, from any industry. On the top ten list of “Innovation,” Dell was absent while Apple Computer placed 3rd after Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (1st) and FedEx (2nd). On the top ten “Computers” list, at number 1 (ironically, since they’ve exited the PC business) sits IBM with a score of 7.61, Dell at number 2, with 7.46, and Apple Computer scored 6.84, which was good enough for 3rd place. In computer software, Apple isn’t even included on the list – so, now you know just about everything you need to know why this list is a mess. Apple is one of the top software developers in the world.
Fortune and its survey partner, Hay Group, asked the top managers at 582 companies (the largest by revenues in each sector) to judge their competition. In all, 10,000 executives, directors, and securities analysts rated the companies in their industry on eight attributes (Innovation, Employee talent, Use of corporate assets, Social responsibility, Quality of management, Financial soundness, Long-term investment, Quality of products/services). Fortune then asked voters to name the companies they most admire in any business from a pool that included last year’s top quartile of finishers plus the top two on each industry list.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
BusinessWeek: Rather than dismissing Apple products as fads, Dell should try starting a few – January 31, 2005
Dismissive Dell CEO not impressed with Apple Mac mini, calls iPod a ‘one-product wonder’ and a ‘fad’ – January 17, 2005
Michael Dell owes Apple an apology; Apple up 176 percent vs. Dell’s 13 percent in past 12 months – January 15, 2005
Ben – I did crawl into your cave, and we had a good ol’ time, too. Do you want me to come back to visit?
Uh-oh. I made a stinky in my diapie. Where’s my mommy?
Dell pfft. Michael Dell is not only a Republican, he’s such a loser he still has his computers assembled in the US.
PeterTheDellBeater: (hehee..)
Yes, businesses jab at each other. Thats what they do. Dells jabs Apple, Apple jabs Dell, Dell sucks…end of story. I’m pretty sure Jobs can defend himself without help from the likes of a “dellbeater” (again, heheh).
Remind me again why you are still here?
BSOD:
congrats…way to use symantics to make some sort of point (which we are all waiting for)
Ben really had the little girl laugh down. And he seems to have a memory problem.
These Wintel trolls like Ben and NMFY crack me up. MDN wouldn’t be half as entertaining without them!
Little Boy Ben,
I’m here to profess my love for you…
oh wait, I was here to explain why Apple makes a quality product and Dell makes cheap crap.. But then I ran into you… 😀
Ben,
What symantics? I said what I said and that’s it. If you’re going to comment on someone’s post, then just take the time to read it and perhaps even accurately quote it. I know that’s a lot to expect – and perhaps too much to expect from someone with your obvious intellectual limitations – but it could be a start.
Oh, and you might want to actually read the thread’s referenced article, too. It’s just a thought.
Ben is a discrace to us REAL WinTrolls. Ignore him and his childish ignorance and perhaps he’ll go away.
” I was here to explain why Apple makes a quality product and Dell makes cheap crap.”
Yeah, I think this crowd needs that explained to them one more time. You might have a tough time with that one. Tell us all again why Dell makes cheap crap made of poo?
Ben, it’s time to change your diapie. Stop smearing poo all over the eMachine and let’s get you cleaned up.
Leave me alone, mommy! I’m chatting with the Mac kids and reading Ashlee Simpson’s daily journal!
I can’t remember the exact details of the story because it was a few years ago that I read it, but from what I recall, Apple teamed up with another company whose name I forget to build an easy to use online community. It became very expensive, however, and shortly before it went live, Apple pulled out. The other company found other investors and released the first version of AOL a few months later. Apple kept some of it’s stock and made a little money on the deal but no where near what they might have had they stuck it out.
hey ndelc
Apple used to have an online service portal for authorized service providers. I think it was called AppleLink. They sold the AppleLink foundation to Steve CAse, and AOL was born. Apple later tried to do the eWorld thing, and it was a flop.
haha Dell are innovative because they are SO CHEAP. I could replace the entire computer every 6mo for the cost of a mac Gpu. Then again, why would I want to since they are noisy and buggy. They seem to own the world though, its the only thing FoxNews and CNN agree on, which laptops to get…
Yup, Apple was behind AppleLink which became AOL.
AOL was originally co-developed by Quantum and Apple, and would have been called “AppleLink Personal Edition” or something like that, except that Apple pulled out due to cost overruns.
Even so, AOL was Apple-only for its first year and a half, I think…
http://www.corp.aol.com/whoweare/history.shtml isn’t detailed, but it’s useful.
The PC FAITHFUL Dont buy on price. They buy on performance. Faithful users could care less about Dell, IBM, Sony, Apple or anybody. The fact is the “Faithful” Buy on pure performce. Something None of you would understand using your POS Overbloated, Underestimated crap parts from Apple, Dell, and so on. The real funny shit is that most of you are so ignorant to know that besides the Mobo and Chip, everything else is a PC Part (Besides G5 Power Supplies) CD-Roms. Oh and you know whats even worst? The memory that comes with the G5’s is THE SLOWEST memory on the market. The Cache Latency is the highest in the industry.
“The PC FAITHFUL Dont buy on price. They buy on performance. Faithful users could care less about Dell, IBM, Sony, Apple or anybody. The fact is the “Faithful” Buy on pure performce. Something None of you would understand using your POS Overbloated, Underestimated crap parts from Apple, Dell, and so on. The real funny shit is that most of you are so ignorant to know that besides the Mobo and Chip, everything else is a PC Part (Besides G5 Power Supplies) CD-Roms. Oh and you know whats even worst? The memory that comes with the G5’s is THE SLOWEST memory on the market. The Cache Latency is the highest in the industry.”
Yes, we do know what parts are in a Mac. No Apple doesn’t used the cheapest parts, you are clueless. Look inside a G5. They use Pioneer and Sony DVDR/RW drives, but if you condier that cheap for a personal computer then, so be it.
The latency on most macs is CAS 2-2-2, which is not slow. You’re misguided and cluess and obviously a troll that know little about Macs. The only good PC I have is the one I built myself. I even put a after market heatsink my video cards. Super low noise etc. Dell uses cheap parts.. the cheapest they can buy.
WHAT, I MEAN WHATTTTTTTTT
That it, I had enough bull, First the only reason Dell is america’s most admired company is that they flooded the market with their name so much that the avg. joe who don’t know about computers will alway will buy a computer that cost $500.00, cause that person don’t know what he or she got to so they have to buy cables and more parts in the computer to make it run. Now FORTUNE mag only look at what company is selling and making the most money at that time. Here in Austin Dell is one of the most hated company. You ask most of the worker who work there and use to work there believe that, cause Dell makes up to 15% of the work force in Austin, Tx. And when they had their layoff that hurted Austin. Dell will never be first in anything but selling junk that why they got sh#tly grin when they was told about FORTUNE.Dell just wait for somebody to come up with something then take idea and strip it down and put their name on it.But I think in the next 5 years DELL will be gone. How can a company like Dell stay around that never make nothing but junk and make it America is going to catch on so or later. So Micheal aka Mary and Kevin aka kathy enjoy your fame now. You two got maybe 2 to 5 years left before Dell go under and I know that for a fact
“And when they had their layoff that hurted Austin. Dell will never be first in anything but selling junk that why they got sh#tly grin when they was told about FORTUNE”
Where’s that article again about Mac users being more intelligent?
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Ben
Don’t be hateing. I didn’t say Mac users are more intelligent. Just because I miss spell a few words, But as a Mac user, we do stand behind are products.
Honestly who cares what he thinks? He’s just looking for attention. His comments and opinions of Apple don’t change how I feel about Apple.
Dell is actually an innovator in manufacturing and distribution, but beyond that, they’re just an assembler. They might as well build and sell toasters. If they don’t change and adapt with the market, they’ll be gone in a decade.
“Don’t be hateing. I didn’t say Mac users are more intelligent. Just because I miss spell a few words, But as a Mac user, we do stand behind are products.”
wow….just wow.
I would love to see Dell’s idea of a console. Their Dell DJ pod was nothing more than a copy of the iPod, only crap.