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.
On December 6, 2007, Apple’s market value passed 3 times that of Dell’s, $165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion, respectively.
Today in NASDAQ trading, Apple rose $6.05, or 3.48%, to close at $180.00 and the company’s market value passed 4 times that of Dell’s, $158.66 billion vs. $38.97 billion.
Got any snappy retorts now, Mr. Dell? What’s that, cat got your tongue?
AAPL and DELL quotes via NASDAQ are here.
LOVE IT!
Don’t Be Like Mike
Stupid asshat Michael Dell has this coming to him. With any luck, that insulting will get out of the business to ‘concentrate on his family’ …. or whatever.
Carry your ass, Dell.
While I love that Apple’s value is 4x that of Dell, Apples net value has remained at a plateau for the last year or so (~$160 Billion) while Dell has shrunk from ~$70 Billion to $39 Billion! Dell is rapidly loosing what little inherent value it has as a company. Dell does NOT have an innovation stream and is no simply competing against other simple commodity PC manufacturers where it is simply “how cheap can I make this”.
Yea but, Dell has such a huge share of the market, doesn’t market share mean everything?
Say good night, Michael!
Karma is a bitch eh mickey?
How d’ya like them apples Mikey?
Bring back the dude!
Dude, you’re getting irrelevant.
Anyone know where i can find a picture of Jobs w/ Dell and the Bullseye??
What has happened to Dell as well as the person who started Gateway is both the fault of PC mfgs as well as Microsoft. First as someone who used to work on a Dell at work I can say that their products for the most part at garbage. In order to keep lowering prices they have gone to really cheap components.
Now is I remember wasn’t Vista supposed to drive hordes of consumers into retailers to upgrade their PC’s? Only one problem with that someone forgot to tell them ! Windows stopped being cool a long time ago and the failure of Vista is surely one of the reasons for the fall of Dell & Gateway.
Bill needs to bet back to the MS campus and lease an office somewhere away from Richmond where a bunch of developers can go off site and reinvent Windows so that’s it cool again. Meanwhile OSX continues to gain share and Apple stock is up again courtesy of MS.
Snappy retort:
I think Dell will blend.
Volume is vanity.
Profit is sanity.
Interesting that Dell has closed, is closing and vastly shrinking it’s tech support and sales centers staffed by Dell Employees. Once all the people from the Dell corporate ranks have been let go and Dell is relying on mostly contracted outsourced Support and Sales, how long will it be before they start to slip to the number 5 computer manufacturer spot?
Digg It like crazy!!!
http://digg.com/apple/Apple_now_worth_quadruple_Dell_s_market_value
Bill needs to bet back to the MS campus and lease an office somewhere away from Richmond where a bunch of developers can go off site and reinvent Windows so that’s it cool again. Meanwhile OSX continues to gain share and Apple stock is up again courtesy of MS.
I don’t even know where to start on this one…
Richmond?
This guy deserves what he gets, though I truly feel sorry for all the workers that are losing their jobs and Im sure there will be more to come.
At the time he made that statement, I’m sure he thought nothing could ever touch him, he was on top. As Canada Mark said, they do lack an innovation stream, so they have nowhere to go but down, and ultimately there is going to be no way out.
Karma is a bitch! Good luck Mike, you are so going to need it.
Something about Mike looks
” rel=”nofollow”>familiar…
I meant Redmond…sorry but still the thought remains. Microsoft needs to make Windows cool again ! Now I have heard that Microsoft can’t do this because Windows PC’s have too many third party components blah blah but the fact of the matter is that if Microsoft reinvented Windows with an OS that was cool and worked great a lot of people would, I believe, be willing to upgrade..until then people want to keep XP
“Karma is a bitch eh mickey?”
He aint talking smack about Apple no more! hehe
I think Micheal Dell might be a good prospect to replace Ballmer at Microsoft.
Considering how he has turned DELL around, he should be able to take microsoft to the next level(down that is)
What do you think?
I really appreciate that you guys have a long, long memory. I love how you pull out these quotes and, deservingly, fling it back in their faces. I remember when Michael Dell made that comment and how angry it made me. With Apple riding high today it’s validating that we stood by Apple and Mac all these years, because it was a little scary back in the late 90s. I mean, we know the Mac is better, but if I could not get my employer to let me use one at work then what! I had decided back then that if Apple shutdown it’s Mac business that I would quite design and do something else rather than sell out and use Windows after Microsoft rose to dominance through illegal means. Now all we have to worry about is Apple being big that they loose focus, which I don’t think will happen as long as Steve is there. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Rich Apple Person has landed.
When does Laura Goldman weigh in on this?
Windows was never ‘cool’.
No, it wasn’t.
If you were walking around in 1990 saying “Windows is so cool!” then you had normal people calling you a computer geek, and computer geeks making fun of you for running gimmicky Windows instead of good ol’ DOS.
I saw a t-shirt back in those days I will never forget:
Double Your Hard Disk Space: Delete Windows!
Yeah, well screw you guys.
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful year.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t it.
Rich Apple Person writes, “Bill needs to bet back to the MS campus and lease an office somewhere away from [Redmond] where a bunch of developers can go off site and reinvent Windows so that’s it cool again.” Well, were Gates both technically brilliant and a first rate visionary, MAYBE he’d have a shot. But he’s neither, despite his former “Chief Technology Architect” position.
As to the “Rich” part, perhaps had I not been burned during the 2000 tech meltdown I wouldn’t be so reticent in my Apple investments. I did pick up a few more shares two months ago – at ~$120. What a ride it’s been since! Joy mixed with regret (that I didn’t buy MORE).
Mikey, How do like them Apples?
Thanks Steve, just thanks.
Ballmer: Here’s a chair Mickey, now go toss it
Mickey: **aahhrumph**
Ballmer: Wakes up after being out for 2 hours; You idiot, across the room not at me!!
This type of story (ad nauseum it seems) is getting very old. Who gives a rat’s ass about Dell. Market dynamics will decide their fate. In the meantime, continuing the 3rd grade behavior evident in this thread is asinine.
Can we now move on to something positive, like where Apple seems to be putting its energy over the next 6 months or so? Sheesh.
hilarious……. and now he thinks he can do what jobs did.
Get over yourself and your supercilious attitude, “It’s About TIme.” If you don’t like the WELL-DESERVED contumely heaped upon Mr. Dell by us MDN’ers, then go somewhere else where more erudite topics are discussed at all times.
As for me, give me the next article announcing AAPL’s valuation at 5 X DELL! Can’t wait.
@ It’s About Time
Dredging up that quote never gets tiring! Especially when certain milestones are reached.
It’s always good for a laugh because it was such an absolutely absurd suggestion.
Love great Apple history still in the making… btw MDN, to reflect the story, don’t just paste his mug big & in such vibrant colors, we rather see his face pale & bulleye covered. Do us all a favor will you?
Sounds like Apple has a buying opportunity with the $20 billion is cash. They could make the return of investment in 3 to 4 years and take a good chunk of all those business accounts in one foul swoop. Mike Dell will become CEB Chief Excutive Biatch!
Pronouncer – The word is “supercilious”
@Randian – Could you use it in a sentence please?
Pronouncer – Why yes…”Your girlfriend thought you looked supercilious the first and only time she saw you without pants”.
Just in case any of you were wondering it was Ted Waite who started Gateway to answer
@ It’s About Time
I’d tend to agree with the rest of the folks here. Dell started this with his comments, and so it is only fitting that he be ridiculed in some manner.
Problem with Dell is, the only thing they could innovate is a cheaper manufacturing process. Squeezing a few pennies a step at a time out of the cost only paints you into a corner. Without anything else to offer your buyers **cough** an OS **cough cough** then you have nothing to truly differentiate yourself from your competition.
He looks like the test tube love child of Fred Savage and Richard Kind.
We all make mistakes …
Sometimes, some of us make bigger, costlier mistakes.
I’m one of those who can NEVER get enough of this story, either. And yes, karma IS a bitch!
The remarkable thing about this saga is when you pay attention to Dell’s numbers just since January 2006. I mean, we can all place these dates in “Apple time”.
In January ’06 Macworld had just ended with the surprise announcement of Intel chips already in the 15″ MacBook Pro, the Mac Mini, and the iMac. At that moment, Dell was basically at $72B marketcap.
July 27, 2007 is a year and a half later and was two days before the iPhone dropped. Dell’s marketcap had also dropped to about $64B.
December 6, 2007 is right at the peak of Apple’s fiscal 1st quarter (traditionally their strongest), during the holiday season. It was NOT a merry Christmas for Dell; they had dropped again to about $55B.
Which brings us to today, May 1st, 2008, where we see that Dell has sunk like a rock to basically $39B!
No WONDER they’re firing people and shutting down facilities! I’m like everybody else: it’s bad for the employees to get thrown out in the street, especially in THIS economy, essentially because their leadership hired them into a company that was always a one-trick-pony.
As I’ve said here before, once a one-trick-pony has done their trick, it’s time to go home; there’s nothing else to see.
Peace.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Olmecmystic
Its because DELL spends all of its extra money on tech support.
‘He looks like the test tube love child of Fred Savage and Richard Kind.’
He totally does. With maybe a drop of Casey Kasem thrown in. This doesn’t look good, Scoob’!
What you guys are saying has hurt me so very much. In fact I cried all the way to the bank.
Plus, have you wankers seen my wife? Ha…Ha…Ha…
OBTW…I wrote this on my daughter’s iPhone…
but your daughter has seen my wanker.
Yeah, she was telling me about that guy who stuck it in one of our goats.
I saw those goat pictures. You call that a wanker?
Dude, you need a new wanker.
Stop picking on Mike.
He was absolutely correct he was asked if he was in charge what would he do and if he was in charge that would have been the correct answer. Fortunately Steve was in charge and the rest is history.
@it’s about time:
After taking crap from Windows people for years about how the CLI (command line interface) was sooooo superior to the GUI (graphic user interface) and listening to IT wannabe gods who bad mouthed the Mac (only to have their own argument dissolve when I asked them about the last time they were on one) and the Zune Thang type behaviour you see from these bozos you have to come to realize that stooping down to using 3rd grade behaviour is about as low as you need to go to convince them that they won’t pass kindergarten with that type of behaviour.
Oh yeah, so it will go on, ad nauseum. After all if they dished that crap out for years, they should be able to take it back for a few years.
Except that I doubt olde Mickey Dell will have anything to sell or give back to the shareholders by the time it is all through.
After all, the Gates of Dell will never prevail.
And that is a similar story that has been going on (perhaps ad nauseum) for over 2000 years.
Not sure of the exact figures but taking historical spit adjusted prices from 6 Oct 97 and today’s close here is what we have.
Apple 1997 4.8B Today 158B
Dell 1997 25B Today 39B
MSFT 1997 133B Today 273B
Say what you want Dell is defeated in my books.
Cheers
If history teaches us anything it’s that nobody stays on top for very long. Gates bought and stole most of the technology for Windows but somewhere along the way Microsoft has become a big bloated corporation. Apple has lead with innovative products and a very demanding CEO in Jobs. Does anyone think that the current braintrust leading Microsoft can really restore investor confidence and get people to upgrade their aging PC’s?
Competition is good. it forces companies to keep innovating. I too bought Apple stock at $120 and expect it to go over $200 when new iPhones are released. Meanwhile people who are working at MS have stock options that are not worth anything if they are new comers.
Dell will survive but it they are too dependent on MS to drive people to upgrade. What is happening is a text book case of Marketing 101: when a company reaches the penetration stage of the market profits decline as the product becomes a commodity. Apple meanwhile it looks like is going to introduce an iPhone that can be used with any wireless carrier while still taking in dollars from AT&T;via their contracts. This is the difference between a well run company and MS.
Michael’s 1997 comment was a defining ‘Call to Duty’ moment for the Macintosh community and one I believe served to galvanize it. It was equally incredulous to me not only that a CEO would say such a thing in a public meeting, but that people were believing him! A box cloner that never invented anything! Something had to be done.
Those of us that had any type of influence over a Mac infrastructure all looked in the mirror that night and had a tough decision to make. My moment came a few weeks later when I was asked by our board of directors why I was still advocating Mac’s. Had I been living in a cave? Had I not heard we were backing a sinking ship (in Apple) and thus flushing the companies resources down the toilet. I successfully defended our position (and promised to give equal consideration to evaluating PC’s), but it was stated in no uncertain terms that if Apple tanked, I would be looking for work. It was a dicey 3 or 4 years before colleagues stopped sending me bad apple jokes and convenience store job applications (you gotta love the American workplace).
Many rightfully praise the vision and leadership of Steve Jobs because without it we would all be suffering horribly, however credit also needs to go to the consumers and advocates that kept the road cleared for the Mac by helping others to understand that quality and innovation are always a good investment.
“have you wankers seen my wife?”
Heh. Dell’s wife has that Vegas plastic surgery look. Kind of reminds me of Windows Vista.
-jcr
And you were going to license OS X for our boxes, right? You had to open your big mouth. Schmuck!
One more thing, Mike: Use some decent soap down here. You smell like day old lox!
@ C1
Poor Fozzy, being compared to Michael Dell…
Michael Dell can close it down, but there isn’t much left to give back to the shareholders.
@Ampar:
Good call on Michael Dell’s resemblance to Fred Savage. When his company finally flames out, perhaps he’ll sell the story of his rise and fall to Hollywood. They can call it The Blunder Years.
When Dell is worth zero, Apple will be infinitely more valuable than Dell. In truth, Apple already is infinitely more precious than Dell.
Dell’s market value appears to be accelerating downward. The number went from 3 times to 4 times while Apple’s market value was marking time (actually went down a bit).
OK! So now Apple can BUY Dell and produce it’s OWN CLONED computers!! ,
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Genius idea… isn’t it?
Where’s that Shaw Wu and that guy from Morgan Keegan???
Winston: Nice!
For a visual representation of what this means, check out this Comparison Chart showing the performance of Apple versus Dell since October 1997. AMAZING!!!
Let’s not forget that Apple’s market cap is also now comfortably ahead of HP (118B), closing in on Google (184B), and at 60% of Microsoft (272B).
Go Apple!
Apple’s market cap is larger than Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Acer. Larger than any of their PC competition. Yet they sell far fewer computers than their competition. Their market cap is also bigger than Intel’s. I would say that the bullseye needs to be moved to Uncle Fester. What other targets are left?
“What other targets are left?”
There are a few more targets. Here are the top thirteen to date.
XOM EXXON MOBIL CP – 478.99B
CHL CHINA MOBILE LIMITED – 351.25B
GE GEN ELECTRIC CO – 331.42B
PTR PETROCHINA CO ADS – 287.25B
MSFT MICROSOFT CP – 270.74B
PBR PETROLEO BRASILEIRO – 274.01B
RDS-B ROYAL DUTCH SHELL – 252.42B
T AT&T;INC. – 235.54B
WMT WAL MART STORES – 225.91B
BP BP PLC – 226.03B
BHP BHP BILLITON LIMITED – 233.34B
BRK-A BERKSHIRE HATH HLD A – 206.81
PG PROCTER GAMBLE CO – 205.21B
Meanwhile, all my neighbours save one, the kids in my college, the anchor-woman on CBC TV, most students in Engineering School, sales representatives I see taking inventory at large food stores, half my family, my video club, etc. use Dell computers…
” . . . use Dell computers…”
Hopefully, those are aging Dell’s that will be replaced with Macs.
every hero requires a nemesis to which he must transcend
Ok … who’s going to start the Dell Death Knell Counter??
MDN Magic Word: death … as in … well … you know. <grin>
Here is a YouTube video rubbing Apple’s 4x market cap in Dell’s face: