“Amid stiffening competition, computer maker Dell Inc. said Monday its fiscal first-quarter results will miss earnings targets, blaming the shortfall on ‘pricing decisions.’ The news sent Dell shares falling nearly 6 percent to a 52-week low,” May Wong reports for The Associated Press. “The Round Rock, Texas-based company said it expects to earn 33 cents per share on revenue of about $14.2 billion, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 38 cents per share on revenue of $14.52 billion.”
“During the quarter, Dell aggressively discounted some of its products as it lost ground to rivals. In a statement, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said the company had been ‘making investments in our support infrastructure and product quality’ and slashing prices. Company officials declined to comment further. Dell will report first-quarter earnings on May 18,” Wong reports. “Stamford, Conn.-based market researcher Gartner Inc. said Dell saw its share of industry computer shipments decline to 16.5 percent in the first quarter of 2006 from 16.9 percent a year ago.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, isn’t that just too bad?
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All this, and the Motherships’ landing gear has barely settled into the Intel landscape, and already these turkey’s rolling over. After years of chiding Apple about not wanting to come over and compete with the” big boys’. I’m with Mr. Reese:
> ‘DIE Dell DIE!’
Ah, it will get much worse for Hell.
Maybe a good time to buy PUTS on dell.
Easy does it, boys and girls.
I don’t see owners of Fords and Chryslers whooping it up over the pain at GM. Too many people work there, too many people have their retirement and investments wrapped up in the company for owners of other makes to make merry.
Be careful your allegiance to Mac (and I’m one of you) doesn’t get all puffed up when a Dell or an HP hurts. That’s cheap and you’re better than that.
Come on.
Why did Dell announce that they were going to miss their target?
Well, if the analists lower their estimates of Dell’s earnings then when Dell does meet that new lower number, it will show on the charts that they met expections. Not correctly showing the massive drop in estimates to their earnings.
Steve did a similar (though the oposite direction) to this in January. When he pre announced that the store sales were $1B and sales were through the roof, the estimates for the analists went up. If you look back now (Yahoo! for example) it will show the surprize was low. In reality, if Steve didn’t tell them, the surprize might have been huge.
Raver,
You have to understand that MOST of the vitriol aimed at Dell is Michael’s fault, exclusively. If he hadn’t opened his fat trap and UNNECESSARILY heaped invective on Apple several years ago, few of us would be reveling in his pain right now. But he DID, didn’t he?
DULL and DELL deserve everything that’s happening–and about to happen–to them right now.
Just ask Earl. Karma is a bitch!
You don’t know the history of schadenfreude.
I do.
The Dell model of cheap computers sold online is starting to crumble.
—
And once again, Michael Dell has come out and said they’d be happy to sell OS X if Steve would let that happen.
Why are sales down? Because a HUGE majority of their sales come from businesses, who are probably cancelling orders (so to speak) due to Vista’s rollercoaster ride of a release schedule.
Look, the horizontal thing works IF the OS is dominant and not horrible. It does. What’s happened? Everyone and their grandmother has cheap PC’s and they see no reason to buy again.. when a SUPER DUPER HIGH END OS gets released they’ll need more powerful machines, and Dells will start selling, but that.. hasn’t happened.
Dell has been asking for OS X for a looong time now.
Rover,
When Michael Dell said what he did, I lost any respect I had previously. He cheapened himself and cannot get back what he so foolishly gave away.
However, I think we join him too easily.
The adverts Microsoft are running in the UK are enough to make me sick. Bank vaults and IT mainframes with ‘security’ drawn on in crappy white pen, almost like an afterthought. The ‘security’ is just big gates around the vault and a castle around a womans laptop. Then a voice says “at Microsoft we are taking your security seriously” After I’d stopped laughing I realised that many people will take this as fact and buy into the lies…
The Windows world is in Vista release countdown, people are holding off sales until Vista is released.
Apple shares will drop next because everyone will realize that only a fringe minority few are looking at Apple as an alternative to Windows computers.
(And why would a PC owner buy an Apple now to spend $200 to put XP on it and several months later have to spend another $200 for Vista?)
Jim:
Whenever those Microsft adverts come on the TV, I laugh so much 😀 And at the end of the advert it has written word, Potential, that just sums up that company so well they have the potential to do a lot of things but are they moving? No.
The point is, Michael Dell kicked Apple when they were down.
That wasn’t gentlemanly.
I believe that Dell will never overtake Apple again in capital value.
The reason being that, in the next few days, Dell will continue going down a bit and AAPL, after the MacBooks come out, will go up.
After that, from the 4th quarter onwards, Apple is going to surge forward and make big market gains.
Wait and see.
Dell and Apple have very little in common.
Apple makes a unique product that can be found nowhere else – one that inspires a level of consumer loyalty almost unequalled in the market.
Dell nails widgets together and ships them as fast and as cheaply as possible. The fact that the widgets are computers is incidental. They could be selling garden hoses for all they know, or care. They’re trying to be Wal-Mart, but they’re not quite that efficient. They’re more like K-Mart…
Dell no that’s backwards computing. Apple and Steve J. could license an OS NeXT version to be distributed by Microsoft. Just withoud iLife and so on and everybody will be better of, even Apple.
Progeny – “Apple makes a unique product that can be found nowhere else – one that inspires a level of consumer loyalty almost unequalled in the market.”
Progeny – LOL. You haven´t been around a Windows gamer.
“…almost unequalled in the market….”
So if its “almost unequalled” who then has “almost equal” consumer loyalty to Apple?
LOL. Clips, quips and cliches tossed together that are not thought out…
Raven,
Dell, by lowering its prices over and over again has hurt other companies. They have employees too roght?. When you have a tumor, you cut it out to save the rest.
Where is the surgeon……..?
F – Dell.
“Progeny – LOL. You haven´t been around a Windows gamer.”
Windows gamers like… Games.. not so much Windows. If another OS for the same hardware cost ran the same games, they could care less. To them, it’s about the games. End of story.
Now Apple unfortunately can’t sell game hardware as cheaply as you can get generic assembled gaming boxes with Windows, and Windows games are currently mostly Windows only. If in the future you could run all of them on Linux or Mac OS and get the hardware at the same price as you currently can on Windows, then some of the “hard core” Windows gamers might switch (maybe for iLIfe, etc.).
Likely, tho, Apple has a long uphill battle to win these types of people over because there has been many many years of misinformation about Macs. It takes longer to counter the damage from lies and misinformation than it does to spread it in the first place.
i hate when people buy Dell because Dell doesn’t drive the industry forward by creating great computer systems/hardware/applications that make the user more productive.
I think Dell’s greatest contribution to the entire computer industry is teaching everyone else inventory control, online/phone ordering and lowering costs so i respect the company. They’re a great packager for a low cost.
“…You haven´t been around a Windows gamer…”
OK – you’ve got me there. Have I missed anything?
“…So if its “almost unequalled” who then has ‘almost equal’ consumer loyalty to Apple?”
How about:
BMW
Google
Martin guitars
Guiness (or any popular beer, for that matter)
New Balance shoes
Harley-Davidson
…need I go on?
The point is (or was) that you can buy a cobbled-together Windows sh*tbox from any one of dozens of low-end vendors, and Dell apparently doesn’t have the chops to hold the upstarts off forever (see today’s article on MDN: “Dell burned by selling machines at bargain-basement prices last quarter, pain may not be over.”).
As for tossed together clips and quips – it’s a message board. How much profundity do you expect?