Dell plunged 15% to $18.72 in pre-market Inet trading after saying it expected fiscal second-quarter earnings of 21 to 23 cents a share, below the average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson First Call of 32 cents a share, due primarily to aggressive pricing in a slowing commercial market.
The Round Rock, Texas-based Dell now sees earnings of 21 to 23 cents a share for the July period on revenue of about $14 billion.
Current market values:
• Apple – $51,064,500,320
• Dell – $44,447,732,640
MacDailyNews Take: If Dell ceased to exist today – say Michael Dell sold the company and gave the money back to the shareholders – nobody outside the company would care. Another Windows box assembler would simply slide into place and the mediocrity would continue unabated.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Survey shows big jump in consumer interest in buying Apple Mac; Dell takes steep slide – July 06, 2006
The Wired 40: Apple #2, Microsoft drops to #36, Dell falls off list – June 28, 2006
Dell laptop explodes into flames at Japanese conference – June 21, 2006
Time Magazine on Apple’s 13-inch MacBook: ‘Dell and HP should be very worried’ – June 07, 2006
The Channel Insider: Dell is no Apple – May 31, 2006
Will Dell’s retail computer stores work sans inventory? – May 30, 2006
Dell to open retail stores – May 22, 2006
Dell burned by selling machines at bargain-basement prices last quarter, pain may not be over – May 09, 2006
Dell warns 1Q earnings will miss mark; shares tumble – May 08, 2006
Apple passes Dell in market value – May 02, 2006
The Motley Fool: Apple ‘may be the next Dell’ – April 07, 2006
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! – April 05, 2006
Payback? Wall Street didn’t like Apple passing Dell in market value – February 09, 2006
Apple Mac is #1 in European education market, pushes Dell down into second place – February 03, 2006
BusinessWeek: How can Apple be worth more than Dell? – January 20, 2006
Steve Jobs emails Apple team: Michael Dell not the best prognosticator, Apple worth more than Dell – January 16, 2006
Apple now worth more than Dell – January 13, 2006
Apple primed to pass Dell in market value – January 12, 2006
Corporate IT buyers fuming that Apple has Intel Core Duo Macs shipping while Dell and HP wait – January 12, 2006
Financial Times: Dell and Microsoft can never hope to attain Apple’s Mac aura – January 10, 2006
Struggling Dell has lost its mojo while Apple shows rapid growth – November 07, 2005
Apple growing faster with more innovative products, better support than ‘one-trick pony’ Dell – November 01, 2005
IDC: Apple shows rapid growth, holds 4.3% U.S. market share on 48% growth – October 17, 2005
Michael Dell say’s he’d be happy to sell Apple’s Mac OS X if Steve Jobs decides to license – June 16, 2005
Why buy a Dell when Apple ‘Macintel’ computers will run both Mac OS X and Windows? – June 08, 2005
Apple Macs are less expensive than Dell PCs – April 25, 2005
Dell CEO: Apple can’t just have one product and then say they’re the innovative leader of the world – February 22, 2005
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
Whoa!
Apple has it’s second best quarter and the next day Dell announces that they won’t meet their predections.
What’s going on… I’ll tell you. People are buying more Macs.
I guess there is a price to pay for endless coupons and deep discounts.
Return remaining money to shareholders.
And I just send a message to MDN about market caps. Guess it’s been noticed by more than just me.
Good-bye Dell.
Oh that’s terible & real, real BAD news, as it means Apple stock will drop again & take the fall…
Dell has lost it’s shine perhaps, but they still command a whopping 30% market share.
What Apple is doing is stealing Dell’s thunder.
If Apple started selling Mac’s with the option of Mac OS X or Windows, or both. They could do some serious damage to Dell with Apple’s numerous high profile stores.
Apple store employees are actively selling MacTels to customers with the intention they go home and install Windows.
After all they are salespeople and salespeople work on commission.
You people are taking Microsoft’s immense power and market position far too lightly.
Dell is firmly entrenched with Microsoft, and as such will rebound quickly. It will be Apple’s stock that will be in the toilet just as soon as Microsoft releases an ultra-stable, secure Vista and a highly anticipated, iPod killing Zune…
… which will be never…
Rest in pieces, Dull and Microshaft.
Dell plays in the razor-thin-margin market while Apple stays out of the garbage dump. Dell is under price pressure from the Chinese (Lenovo, etc) in the commodity market and from Apple at the high end. They are literally between a rock and a hard place.
The next time some pundit runs their mouth about why Apple should play in the throw away end of the market point them to this– you cannot make money at that end.
Yes it is very unfortunate that the average – read dumb – Windows user won’t or is so clueless to consider alternatives to the mediocre world of Windows and switch to either Linux or Mac.
Just today in a local newspaper they are running a poll on the dumbest error messages their computers display in front of them.
Check it out yourself here:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=17726&in_page_id=2&expand=true#StartComments
Dell and Microsoft have seen better days and I really don’t see any future for either company, at least in doing what they have been doing. As a Windows box assembler, Dell is nothing special. Dell machines fail ROUTINELY where I work. Their monitors are nice, though, and I’ve heard many a Machead speak positively of them. If I was Dell, I’d branch out into something else besides computers while I was still solvent. Leave the low end to folks like Tiger and leave the high-to-middle ground with Apple.
To Mr. Gorilla, please do not put apostrophes where they’ don’t belong.
Its denotes possession, It’s means it is. Gorillas may not be able to remember that, but cows do and it offends us to have to see errors repeated until they become acceptable.
Next, the plural is indicated by adding an s without a preceding apostrophe. The plural of Mac is Macs.
This message in the interest of the whole herd, not just a pride of gorillas.
Hortense prays that the gorillas do not reoffend.
The truly funny part about this is that Dell is about to open retail stores…but you won’t be able to actually BUY the product and take it home!!!
You can SEE it and enjoy all the wonderful windowsness in a kind of poorly guided demo…then PAY…and wait for your machine to arrive in a brown truck.
I recall some years ago that Sears tried this. They called them Catalog Stores. You’d go in, look at a refrigerator, and then a week or two later it would show up. How many Sears Catalog stores do you suppose are still out there? None. They had all closed by 1993. Just like the Mail Order catalog Dell’s model doesn’t account for the human need to interact and get assistance when you need it…in person….and BUY it and take it home immediately…
It HAS worked of course to discount the crap out of what they sell, offering the lowest of the low, only to upsell when they get you on the site or the phone. Dell’s 30% market share is sustained only by constant huge marketing dollars. Don’t be surprised to see HP make a major push with the arrival of Vista and take some more of Dell’s market share.
Apple will gain too…likely 1% possibly more…which of course translates to close to a billion dollars.
Correction: Apple store employees do not work on commission.
” If Dell ceased to exist today – say Michael Dell sold the company and gave the money back to the shareholders – nobody outside the company would care. Another Windows box assembler would simply slide into place and the mediocrity would continue unabated.”
The same could be said about Apple or any other PC maker, The others would take their share and life would go on.
And Apple’s not so sufficiently different that anyone would mourn the passing of their PC business other than a few Mac afficionados and the antitrust guys at Microsoft (Who need some competitor, even one with only 2% worldwide share, to point to as a “Competitor” to Windows.)
Where is the companion story about the Microsoft $40 billion share buyback? That is a bigger story than Dell, because it is PROOF that MS has given up on being a growth company.
MS actually IS giving the money back to the shareholders.
Even more telling is that the stock price barely budged on the announcement, which is NOT what you want to have happen when you announce a buyback.
Ah, schadenfreude! Dell drops like a lead balloon, while Apple rockets ahead. How sweet it is. It is all coming together folks. Steve made the smart choices, the goodies are in the pipeline and the vision is brilliant at 1 Infinite Loop.
A few more years of this and I’ll be financially independent and be able to buy multiple Macs on a whim. I am already thinking of writing parallel code for a collection of new Intel based Xserve boxes — just for fun.
I’ve done a lot of scientific and engineering modeling and simulation in my working life and like to play with that kind of stuff. Who knows, maybe in my old age — which is already here — I’ll even get a business out of it. Smile Apple folks. Just wait until the next quarters results make the current one look like a fart in a hurricane.
I heard the Wall Street Journal Report
radio segment this morning. It said all
of the tech sector saw decline except for
Apple and Motorola.
Dell said to have ‘dozens’ of burned laptop incidents on file
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/07/21/overheating_laptops/
Remember when Apple did their last stock split around the end of March last year, it put Apple’s and Dell’s around the same price – $40. Now AAPL is over $60, DELL under $20.
Here’s a two year chart not including today (yet)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=2y&s=AAPL&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=dell&c=^IXIC
There´s trouble ahead —- Dell dropping , Intel and AMD, too. That says there is trouble in the computer market. Big trouble.
And it will effect Apple, too.
Apple´s numbers looked good because of huge pent up demand from Mac owners to get a new notebook computer.
The economy is slowing, people are seeing they don´t really need a new computer for what little they use it for.
Hence the very conservative forecast from Apple for the next quarter.
“Dell is under price pressure from the Chinese (Lenovo, etc) in the commodity market and from Apple at the high end. They are literally between a rock and a hard place.”
Except you make the mistake. Dell is the Hammer not the Anvil.
Because they have a very good low cost structure and fewer links in the distribution chain, they are better placed to take the fight to competitors on on price. They can inflict more pain than they take when doing that.
“Dell is about to open retail stores…but you won’t be able to actually BUY the product and take it home!!!
“
However have to agree the “can’t take it home” store is the most retarded idea ever. They better get smart and at least have some standard “take it now” configurations in stock.
Gandalf, nice chart, but you must click on “Scale=linear” to get a better comparison.
Such as this…
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=2y&l=off&z=m&q=l&c=dell,^IXIC
“vision is brilliant at 1 Infinite Loop.”
If the vision is to become a Dell clone in a pretty box, yes, that’s going well.
Market share isn’t worth a damn if you can’t turn a profit. Pundits have been obsessed with Apple’s small market share for years, while the company hums along making a pretty penny.
Dell has proven that if your only selling point is price, you’ve got nothing to fall back on.
It’s all well and good to cheer over the stock price and the market cap, but it’s all crap.
I’ll admit it, I’ve been itching to sell (XXX) and buy Apple for nearly a month, waiting for the “right time”, expected that would be “now” … but Apple tricked me and went up ahead of my expectation. Boo. BOO! So, I’m a bit ticked.
But! That’s not why it’s crap. It’s crap because it’s based on the perceptions of people who, more often than not, have no clue about the intricate worth of the company they are buying or selling. Back around 2001 the stock was valued at a dollar or two over the value of Apple’s cash-on-hand. If you bought it all at $14 a share and put Apple’s cash in your pocket you’d have ended up paying about $2 a share for the company! And those same shares would be worth $120 each today (it was pre-split).
Don’t fixate on the price of shares, they’ll kill you. Especially Apple’s – they make the rest of the market look sane. Sure … it’s nice to say “nyah-nyah Dell”, but don’t take it too seriously.
And would the cow please leave the gorilla alone?
They should have kept the pot smoking Dell dude. A least that was some sembalnce of cool.
” If Dell ceased to exist today – say Michael Dell sold the company and gave the money back to the shareholders – nobody outside the company would care. Another Windows box assembler would simply slide into place and the mediocrity would continue unabated.”
“The same could be said about Apple or any other PC maker, The others would take their share and life would go on.”
You couldn’t be more wrong.