“Michael Dell last year promised innovative new consumer products to generate ‘product lust’ and spark his company’s turnaround effort. But in the runup to the holiday sales season, Dell Inc. has been slow to deliver on that promise,” Justion Scheck and Christopher Lawton report for The Wall Street Journal.
MacDailyNews Take: If by “slow,” Scheck and Lawton mean “unable,” they’re right. Otherwise, “slow” gives Dell far too much credit.
Scheck and Lawton continue, “Dell has decided not to launch… a mini MP3 player based on entertainment software from Zing, a company Dell bought in 2007, for an expected fall release… say people familiar with the matter.”
Dell “decided to hold off on the music player indefinitely, one person said, and to proceed with Zing software. Dell declined to comment on the music player, but said it will introduce Zing software that organizes downloaded music and movies on PCs,” Scheck and Lawton report.
MacDailyNews Take: Epic fail of Enderlean proportions. (See: This is not a joke: Dell hires Rob Enderle to consult on new ‘iPod killer’ – July 30, 2008)
Scheck and Lawton continue, “Dell says it is well-equipped for holiday sales, having unveiled multicolored Studio notebooks in June and several desktops since.”
MacDailyNews Take: Slapping some paint on the lids of OS-limited, thick, ugly, craptops is considered “well-equpped” at Dell.
Scheck and Lawton continue, “Lou Miscioscia, a Cowen & Co. analyst, says it has also raised concerns about Dell’s attempt to emerge from a three-year slump. ‘They’re obviously behind on the consumer side,’ Mr. Miscioscia says. Last month, he lowered his expectations for Dell’s sales over the next year, citing economic weakness and a ‘slower-than-expected ramp of new PCs.'”
Dell’s retail chief Michael Tatelman says “‘You’ll see some very sexy products coming out of Dell,’ though they may come after the holidays, he says. Dell, he adds, will fuel holiday sales with new ways for consumers to personalize PCs, such as new exterior designs and deals with music and movie providers to preload entertainment content on PCs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Tatelman is delusional.
Scheck and Lawton continue, “In a conference call last fall, [CEO Michael Dell] said Dell would increase consumer sales by engendering ‘product lust.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, for Macs.
Scheck and Lawton continue, “In October, Dell finished company-wide layoffs of about 9,000 workers.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “James W.,” “Richard,” and “Dennis” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: BusnessWeek’s Peter Burrows interviewed Michael Dell in August:
Burrows: It seems to me that if the strategy works, Dell could be the primary counterweight to Apple’s closed digital media model. Am I making too much of this?
Dell: I don’t think you are.
Always remember and never forget that without paint we’d have a lot of rust.
Dell’s done they just don’t know it yet.
Mickey Dell needs to pull his head out of his ass and admit that Dell is not an innovator in any market.. Get it out in the open and embrace the fact that they just make cheap PCs and Servers. Once they do that they’ll enjoy their profit margins of 1-2% and their customer will keeping getting what they always have gotten, Cheap Dell PCs. No one will have any illusions that Dell just makes cheap PCs, Laptops and Servers without the illusions of be innovative.
The other option is keep the blinders on and keep repeating “Dell is an Innovator in the PC Market.” In which case Dell should just lock the doors now and give the money back to the share holders.
The bowl is going to get clogged with Dell, the Zune, RIM and so many others making their final circles. Better get the iPlunger ready!
Innovative developments by Dell.
Its not just a matter of slapping paint, all those robots have to be configured to spray a colour, that configuration has got to be written in code, that code has got to be tested, it has to be virus proofed since they are most likely using XP, then tested.
Once the lids have been painted, they have to be tested against the peel & appeal test, so you see Dell have gone to a great length and cost to deliver multi-coloured laptops!!!!
Will they offer a laptop in Zune brown?
hee hee HA HA HA HA HA HA
The most amazing thing about Dell is, how many customers they have pissed off and completely alienated with horrible rotton bait and switch lies and cheap, flimsy and unreliable hardware powered by BS OS (sorry I meant MS OS).
Dell is a truly pathetic example of American ingenuity.
In the majority of cases, they’ve been able to screw most of the PC buying public at least twice. Fortunately, consumers have learned from these experiences and are now choosing cheap PC’s by HP and other vendors.
Good bye Dell. I won’t miss you.
And they say Apple gets too much free press. Dell is <u>not</u> going to release a new MP3 player and will release software they bought at least a year ago. Slow news day at the WSJ?
> ‘You’ll see some very sexy products coming out of Dell’
He’s right, I’ve seen the new machines already, and I’m telling you: Dell’s new line of notebook computers will be made using completely new and innovative production process: they will be machined out of a single slab of cheap plastic!
“…promised innovative new consumer products to generate ‘product lust’…”
Once again implying that Apple’s formula for success is some kind of oversimplified gimmick that has absolutely nothing to do with end-user experience or specific product quality. Which leads me to ask the question: “Is ignorance learned, or are some just born that way?”
Instead of trying to copy Apple, and instead of perpetuating the miasma that is Windows, maybe Dell should invent their own wheel, from the ground up – Add something new and truly innovative to this unnecessarily narrow market place. Get off of your [Dell] collective duffs and dare to cut a new edge. Put up or shut up.
“In a conference call last fall, [CEO Michael Dell] said Dell would increase consumer sales by engendering ‘product lust.'”
Somebody should tell Michael Dell that you can’t just announce you’re cool.
Hey, I want some credit for “craptops!” I invented that, as far as I know anyway…
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Thay are witing for Zune to be part of Windows mobile before releasing any new hardware
Then it’ll either be a music phone, a music-playing PDA or similar, but will use the zune software and winws mobile OS!
SIDAGTMBTTSH
If there’s any left, that is.
They need some rainbow paint.
The other night, Dell was selling the Studio notebooks on one of the TV shopping channels. The hucksters said they’d sold about 4,000 out of 5,000 by the time I started watching.
Somehow, I managed to contain my “enthusiasm” and resist making that call.
Product Lust? Unless Mikey Dell is planning a “Private Browsing” section of the Dell Website I don’t see anyone getting an inappropriate feeling for Inspiron Notebooks.
The “Innovative developments by Dell” long list:
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The “Innovative developments by Dell” short list:
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Whew!, glad thats over with. That was tough, almost didnt make it
Dell has hit upon the perfect strategy… a laptop with mat screen, and firewire.
It will be a hit I’m telling you… NOT.
Michael Dell’s idea of product innovation is a better shipping box.
Michael Dell has inspired me, that’s for doggone sure.
Yes, it’s official. As of today, I am innovative and cool.
Hey, If you don’t believe me, just read my press release!
Thank you Mr. Dell, now I can hold my head high!
________________________________________
An anagram for Inspiron is In Prison.
Dell innovated the assembly and sale of PCs, not the PC itself.
It’s silly to think that now they can begin creating truly innovative consumer products.
.
Dell has been on deaths bed for too long. Dell has become a side show. Will they ever come back, pretty doubtful, they were bottom feeders and now there isn’t much of a bottom. People, (took long enough) are starting to figure out that quality counts, quality costs, and quality has a very long shelf life and in the end is much less money to own and operate.
Didn’t anyone tell Dell that it’s over when the fat lady zings.
Assembly and repackaging of others hardware parts, then slapping your logo all over it, should not really constitute calling a company a “hardware manufacturer.” Buying up a software company, then choking the living crap out of it for a year before you rebrand it and slap your logo all over cannot really constitute calling a company a “software innovator” either.
So is Dell really a company at all? SIDAGTMBTTS.