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.
This morning in intraday NASDAQ trading, a mere four months after becoming twice as valuable as Dell, Apple’s market value passed 3 times that of Dell’s, $165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion.
Got any snappy retorts for that one, Mr. Dell?
AAPL and DELL quotes via NASDAQ are here.
The only thing that I truly hope for is that the rest of the electronics industry learns from the success of Apple. MAKE GOOD PRODUCTS AND THEY WILL COME!
’nuff said?
Dell?
Wasn’t that a budget pc maker from the 1990s?
RIP Dell (good riddance)
@ Realist.
While we are all celebrating and enjoying our smug notion that Steve beat Mike like a dead horse, let’s look around at what is going on in Cupertino.
Isn’t the course we are on this morning the very same path that was blazed by Dell?
In the quest for money, market share and APPL records, Steve has lost his focus on changing the world (in spite of his claim that his gadgetery phone has done that (it has done no such thing)) and instead become Gordon Gekko.
Too bad – oh, what might have been.
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There IS ONE big difference between Dell and Apple, and that is the Apple don’t give a fsck about pc marketshare. If it was they would have gone down the budget pc route many years ago.
Apple’s culture is one quality products, innovation and giving consumers what they want with an intuitive interface and outstanding quality user experience.
And Dell’s culture is ‘reduce the number of screws in their next pc range so that they can make them abit cheaper’.
Yep, have the iPhone and it’s really, really fun. But it has not changed my life at all. I simply enjoy the leading edge gadget that it is.
And, for all who believe Apple is as devoted to excellent customer care, quality hardware and software as it once was, are either not paying attention or maybe even delusional.
Would you like a dozen real world, real life examples, I’ll be happy to provide the list but, others in this forum answer this question all the time. The problem is they are dismissed by the irrational following Steve enjoys from the legions who continue to consume his koolaid regardless of the REALITY of his soft and hard products.
Zune Tang®: Best post I’ve read by you in a while! Very funny. Am I the only one who sees a parallel between ZT’s humorous approach and that of Stephen Colbert?
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/index.jhtml
Realist: Could you please give some specific examples of where “Steve has lost his focus on changing the world”.?
And, do any of you actually believe Steve would be best business mind, best captalist, best CEO etc, etc., by the business media if all he had done was to launch some new eye candy like iPhone’s home page and something as useless as ‘Stacks’?
Nope, no way. It’s all about the growth in AAPL, market share, and other glow on the street.
If the value of the company levels off, Steve will disappear from the magazine covers. And, don’t tell me he is not charged up with all the attention – his duel with Michael Dell is proof of his enormous ego and that’s what really drives him these days.
I just liked it better when he was driven by wanting to make personal computing as easy, powerful, fast, stable, dependable, useful, and robust as it could be instead of spending so much time marketing the illusion of these things.
Pray for me! My kid is entering the College of Business at Minnesota State University, Mankato. What that means is she is forced to use a Dell lap top with vista. The campus computer store then installs the necessary software. I emailed them that I would rather pay for a MBP but they said the COB does not allow that. Unbelievably stupid administrators at the COB! She already has an ibook and has been Mac her entire life. Sad!!!!
Reminds me of a fake press release from Motorola a few years back:
MOTOROLA TO CUT WORKFORCE 120 PERCENT
NEW YORK, N.Y. (SatireWire.com) – Motorola will reduce its workforce by an unprecedented 120 percent by the end of 2001, believed to be the first time a major corporation has laid off more employees than it actually has.
Motorola stock soared more than 12 points on the news.
The reduction decision, announced Wednesday, came after a year-long internal review of cost-cutting procedures, said Motorola Chairman and CEO Chris Galvin. The initial report concluded the company would save $1.2 billion by eliminating 20 percent of its 108,000 employees.
From there, said Chris, “it didn’t take a genius to figure out that if we cut 40 percent of our workforce, we’d save $2.4 billion, and if we cut 100 percent of our workforce, we’d save $6 billion. But then we thought, why stop there? Let’s cut another 20 percent and save $7 billion.
“We believe in increasing shareholder value, and we believe that by decreasing expenditures, we enhance our competitive cost position and our bottom line,” he added.
Motorola plans to achieve the 100 percent internal reduction through layoffs, attrition and early retirement packages. To achieve the 20 percent in external reductions, the company plans to involuntarily downsize 22,000 non-Motorola employees who presently work for other companies.
Ah, yes, the satisfying aroma of a dish of crow being roasted.
I just hope that Dell doesn’t go under- they make some really nice displays at a price point well below Apple’s, and with better warranties. Their enterprise gear isn’t too shabby either, and at least for now, has way better support than Apple’s gear does. What I’d like to see Apple do is grow and improve their enterprise offerings- they simply aren’t an option for many businesses yet. If they could do for the enterprise what they do for the consumer side of things, they could really clean up!
@silverhawk
Serious bigotry from that college.
Why not tell them to sod off and get her an MBP with Parallels and Vista.
I seriously cannot see how they can dictate that she has to have a Dell when apparently MBP are the fastest notebooks to run Vista. Send them the link:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136649-page,3-c,notebooks/article.html
Realist, go ahead and give us your real-world examples. You do know that they are the definition of anecdotal, right?
To silverhawk:
Tell the alumni association you’ll donate generously if they help you petition the COB to reconsider Macs. Just a thought.
As far as PC makers go, Dell is the closest thing to Apple. That’s not to say they are anywhere close to Apple but they are one of the few who actually keep the customer in mind with their software builds. You can actually build a computer free of trialware and other 3rd party BS software that you will never use. If you want to build a clean machine (Windows only) they actually provide the discs to re-install Windows instead of having to burn a bunch of restore discs that only restore the computer to the same crappy trialware state it came in.
“Michael Dell’s and Laura Goldman’s words coming back to haunt them are always great to hear again!”
Yeah, well I guess people can never be wrong huh??? How come you don’t contantly post quotes like:
“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
— Steve Jobs, Feb. 19, 1996″
Dell’s remarks were a good guess based on the condition of Apple at the time. Even your God thought the Mac was finished…
@shiva105
So Dell has better customer support than Apple???
In that case does Dell have branded stores across the world whereby you can make an appointment to see a genius that knows everything possible about the device/computer, in which you just bring it along and they sort out the problem within 20 minutes face-to-face?
If that isn’t fantastic customer support then what is??
I suppose your idea of better customer support is calling a premium telephone number, waiting on the phone for 60 minutes, then being told your number 150 in the queue and when you do finally get through to the person they can hardly speak any English because the ‘customer support’ centre is 1000s of miles away in a massive warehouse in India?
Boy – Dell sure has great customer support don’t they?
@Jeff
“As far as PC makers go, Dell is the closest thing to Apple”
—
ROFL!
Excuse me while I wipe away my tears – fucking hilarious!
My Father in-law has gone through 3 brand new Dells in 6 months because they have been dead in the box when he has got them home.
One on them even had a virus on it pre-installed!
But that’s what you expect to get when you have a company like Dell thats makes 1000s of computers a day as cheaply as possible and that are built by monkeys who are earning below minimum wage.
You pay your money and tale your choice. Me, I prefer spending abit more and buying an Apple product that I know will have great build quality, and a product I know I will keep for many many years without it falling down when I turn it on one morning.
If Apple is the future,therefore Apple should make really new products in no time.
@ someone
Go get a dictionary and look up the various meanings of the verb milk.
Steve Jobs has done just what he said, he has drawn upon the resources of Macintosh and got busy on the next big thing.
Some people should get more lessons in comprehension. Some people should realize that no one can see all of the picture especially themselves who often seem to be assuming that the square inch that they see is all of it when the picture is the size of a football field.
Steve Jobs use of language is incredibly good, whilst always accurate it says much more to the discerning listener than the others can see.
Dell needs to bring back that DELL DJ BOOBY and put in Played Fer Sure DRM to guarantee success. ahaha
Shouldn’t that be “Apple now worth triple BELEAGUERED Dell’s market value”?
You’re slipping, MDN.
@Realist..
As someone before said..put down the crack pipe.
If you take into account what Apple has achieved in the last five years, it is simply staggering that they HAVE maintained their customer satisfaction rates.
You can argue all you like, but you are just seeing what you want to see and looking for what you want to find. Open your eyes and read Black Swan when you have an hour.
@Someone
By far the best quote of all the posters. Thanks for a taste of reality.
Yes Dell has lost their way the past 4-5 years since MD stepped away from the tillar, however not unlike Apple when Jobs was away having MD back running the show will likely re-invigorate Dell. Not saying they will trounce HP or Apple just saying they will be back in a significant way so I would not underestimate them if I were you. And the premise of this entire discussion is not about innovation, quality, etc it was purely based on market value of the stock so stay with the subject posters.
So let’s look at the historical performance of Dell vs Apple going back to 1990 and you see how far Dell has STILL outperformed Apple, even considering their recent downturn. Which stock would you rather have owned over this time? One that has grown and split seven times for a gain of 300,000% or one that has split twice for a gain of ONLY 2,700%. To put it in monetary terms $1000 of Dell stock bought in 1990 and held until today is worth almost $3 million and the same amount of Apple stock over the same period is worth only $27,000.
Munch on that rotten Apple core you fanboys! I wonder who is still laughing at his many billions in the bank?
But he was rite if “Michael Dell” was CEO of Apple that would have been the best course of action. So what are you beating him up for at least he was up front about it.