“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
We all owe DELL a tremendous debt of gratitude, after all, when Al Gore was their CEO, he did invent the internet…
Ben… Die…
Uh-oh. Ben made another stinky in his diapy.
“Operational Innovation
Dell innovates with efficiency, and that is just what is necessary to survive in a commodity business. This of course is where Walmart is successful as well. Once there isn’t much left in terms of operational efficieny, it makes sense to add additional prducts that are moving towards commodity products. Dell has already moved into TVs.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dell moves to digital cameras soon, more flash mp3 players and Tivo like devices when the times is right. As more an more consumer products use more and more PC componnents, Dell will be right there to lower the price points.”
———————————————————–
It isn’t an innovation to buy cheap products or components from China. Nor is it innovation to pay dirt cheap wages to employees. This is what Walmart does. Wallmart is pretty much selling out the counrty.
NoMacForYou spewed out: Strawberry yogurt is my favorite.
—————————————————–
Funny, I would have guessed cheap hand lotion & a Blue Boy magazine.
To Ben: What kind of pathetic loser shows up to comment on something that doesn’t interest him.
Who cares about Dell?! They wouldn’t know innovation if it stood right in front of them begging!!
He’s just afraid of Steve Jobs, Apple, and the iPod.
Michael Dell, prepare to bow down to Apple’s power.
Here are some brief points regarding Apple’s role in the formation of AOL from the book, “Apple Confidential” by Owen W, Linzmayer:
July 1985 Apple introduces AppleLinks, designed to be a digital connection between Apple and their dealers.
Project Samuel begins – a joint venture between Apple and Quantum to build an online service for, initially, Apple II users, that would basically provide customer support.
May 20, 1988, AppleLink Personal Edition debuts for the Apple II – $6/hour nonprime time service ($15/hour during prime time) gave subscribers access to Apple-specific resources, plus entertainment, business, education, and online shopping. Before the Mac version was released, Apple and Quantum started fighting over the direction of the service and Apple pulled out. They compensated Quantum by funding the beta for the Mac version and brought it to market without the Apple logo.
October 1991, Quantum renamed itself America Online and opened it’s service to everyone, not just Mac users.
In 1992 Apple went to AOL and licensed the code that they originally funded to build eWorld.
June 1994, eWorld debuts.
March 1996, eWorld shuts down for good.
As you can imagine, this was under the chapter entitled “Big Bad Blunders”. Another fascinating part of Apple’s history, and one of the many that make you realize how impressive it is that they survived the 90’s. If you haven’t read Linzmayer’s book, I highly recommend it.
Dell c’est de la merde et c’est pas humain !!!!! ce ne sont que des cartons…….
Apple ne sont pas parfaits mais eux ont du charisme et de la créativité
et c’est pour moi le plus important
RE : YeRaFaiTHFuLLJaCKaSS
The memory, as I’ve mentioned before, is the same DDR400 that you use in PCs, but the motherboard is extremely picky about the SPD programming on the modules. The modules that the board supports are also quite slow, with very conservative memory timings (3-3-3-8). I don’t believe that I’ve ever tested anything that slow on a PC before. And you my freind are clueless and obviously dont have a clue about hardware.
Here much on this for awhile…LOL
Using System.Jackass.Hardware
if( components != null )
else (Kill (Apple))
this.Hardware.Add(this.head)
Dell es un puta mierda hecho de cartón. Apple no es perfecto pero está lleno de carisma y creatividad. Por mí, eso es lo mas importante. Miguel: vete a follar un titi.
Palabra mágica — no sé, es en inglés
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Apple is so great. Everything they do makes me smile.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Dell is kind of like Microsoft. They look at Apple and say “wow, what a great innovative deign, now I’m gonna use it!” Only Dell only looks at the physical appearance of Apple’s products while Microsoft rips the software and Apps.
Dell is like the Wal*Mart of PCs; just making low-budget, pieces of crap (and they’re not that aesteticly pleasing either-not what they were hoping for when they tried to go with the “alluminum” look or the brushed metal look or the white look for their designs.Personally, I think that within the next year or so, Apple will really start to stand out as a great sucess- and this time not because of the iPod. No matter what M$ and Dell or anyone else does that practically totally rips off of Apple designs or ideas or whatever, there will NEVER be any company like Apple. Hands down, they are truly #1.
The Apple/Dell rival interesting. They are both great tech companies for different reasons. Both highly profiled tech companies have extremely successful trackrecords. One is very innovative, stylish and upscale and the other having a sucessful business model and struggling on the success of that marketing strategy to the present. Apple could care less about Dell as a competitor or a business model anymore and Dell can’t help but take notice because Apple sets the trend in the tech world. There is a lot of juicy love/hate relationship with both Apple and Dell among their peers, customers and rivals. Its sure is a nice ride they are giving us. I’m loving the journey! But “Go Apple!”