Contact: Scott Denne
A year after Dell’s $25bn take-private, the PC giant is like a Thanksgiving turkey: it has a rich, golden exterior but the meat is a little dry. As is done by nearly every private technology company, Dell enjoys being able to selectively disclose numbers. No surprise that those numbers highlight its recent momentum. Our surveys, however, aren’t as optimistic.
For example, Dell said at its recent customer conference that PC shipments (not revenue) grew 10% worldwide and 19.7% in the US in 2013. A survey from ChangeWave Research, a service of 451 Research, shows consumer intention to buy a Dell laptop or desktop hit a four-year high last quarter, but among corporate buyers, which account for about 80% of Dell’s PC business, intention to buy Dell dropped to an all-time low.
Dell also claims to be the market leader in storage (in terms of terabytes shipped, which includes storage in servers). According to a survey by TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research, a full 25% of Dell storage customers are considering switching to a competitor in 2015 (only Oracle and Fusion-io fared worse). However, more customers in the same survey did indicate they would increase their spending with Dell in 2015, compared with the same survey a year earlier.
All that is not to say the buyout provided nothing more than a bountiful table for Dell’s marketing department. The company is showing signs of progress on several fronts: management appears more engaged and many customers view Dell as a more interesting vendor to work with. Subscribers to 451 Research’s Market Insight Service can read a more detailed report on Dell’s progress and strategy across several lines of business here.
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