Despite the rumours that have been floating about, Dell has made it clear that they are steering clear of the smartphone industry and are staying optimistic about the future of the PC. In the last few years, the PC business has been losing pace rapidly and manufacturers worldwide are slowing production as demand decreases.
Dell’s revenue in the third quarter was $3.82 billion, nearly 11% down from the previous year, and their desktop revenue saw a full 8% drop. Their market share also saw a drop of a full 14%, with its ROI for the third quarter being 27 cents a share and its worldwide shipments dropping by close to 10%. With revenue declines across all business units, and gradually decreasing figures each quarter, analysts have forecast a very bleak future for the PC-maker’s aspirations for a revival.
Despite this, Dell believes that there is immense potential present in trends like the cloud and bring-your-own-device policies which provide the company with an opportunity to smoothen the melding territories of personal and professional devices. The company has also re-entered the tablet space, intending to incorporate the newly released Windows 8 into their systems, and has invested more of its resources into innovating current voice and touch technologies with the hopes of attracting more consumers, particularly the ones who are still reluctant to switch from the conventional methods of input.
While other companies have shifted their focus to the mobile space to accommodate the rising demand of smartphones and tablets, Dell has insisted that they have no such intentions of hopping on the bandwagon. Jeff Clarke, Dell president of global operations, asserted that the company was not going to produce any smartphones for the foreseeable future, but did mention that the firm would provide smartphone solutions. The company has also planned to utilize the assets they have through acquisitions and in-house development to build a BYOD platform in order to provide solutions for IT problems faced by companies.
With all of Dell’s plans for their future, the one vision that a number of analysts are sceptical about is Dell’s insistent faith in its revival coming from the PC industry. The market for PCs is in a questionable state but Dell has stated that it will carry on and make devices more efficient in terms of security, handling, durability and all-round reliability.
