Not unlike Steve Jobs back in the 1990s, Michael Dell returned to the helm of his company at a crucial moment, when his namesake was seemingly rudderless. Back in 2007, Dell was losing marketshare to HP, Apple had not yet proven the monster it has since become in mobile, and tablets were something used on factory floors.
Since then, Dell has redoubled its efforts in tablets and mobile, reworked its product line to compete with Apple’s resurgent MacBooks, but seen his stock price only slightly recover since the 2008 recession. Why? Dell faces competition from China, for one (Lenovo has claimed it will overtake Dell in market share this year), and from tablets, for the other (Amazon’s new Fire might hurt Dell’s ultralightweight offerings, and its Streak Android tablet).
That said, Dell has to be happy about the on again, off again approach taken to the PC business by its primary competitor, HP.
In short, we’ll have much to discuss – Amazon, Apple, Android and Google, HP – and the future of device computing in general. Not to mention what it’s like to come back and run a company you had once thought you had handed over to a trusted lieutenant.
So I’d love your input. What do you want to hear from Dell, about his company?
As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts (including Paul Otellini, Dennis Crowley, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra, and Reid Hoffman, among others.) The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!
Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo. Next up: Dennis Crowley.
How does Dell respond to Steve Job’s vision of the post-PC future and the PC as trucks metaphor? What’s Dell’s vision for the future of our digital productivity and play?
Hi John,
there’s quite a lot of people who would really really appreciate if you could raise this query with him.
Please ask him why Dell for the last 4 years has stopped salary equity checks ? Basically they used to try bring the more productive staff members up to the same pay levels as their less productive peers. It’s a rather incompetent and offensive management practice especially prevalent in Dell Ireland among the technical staff.
Cheers, Dell Cherrywood
How do you rebuild Dell’s image and capture the trust of consumers after this debacle: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html ?
Every time I think of Dell, that is what comes to mind, immediately. I’m sure he’s been asked this… but how do you truly regain user trust with so many worthy competitors?
Michael Dell, as a successful entrepreneur and a member of the board of Startup America, what advice would you give an entrepreneur just launching a new start-up?
I posted the wrong link entirely. This is the right one: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell-problems-capacitors
How does Dell plan to differentiate itself from other wintel PCs?
Is Innovation in wintel coming only from the company behind the “win”?
How does Michael see Dell’s portfolio strategy (invest, harvest, divest) changing over the next year or two and how will Dell integrate more social intent into their product platforms?
Apple has shown that hardware+software+ecosystem is a winning formula.It locks in customers, makes for good margins and creates strong brand pull.
No PC player seems to be thinking like that. They are still hawking hardware. Faster and cheaper seem to be the buzz words. Does MSD, being an innovator, see opportunity in that space and is Dell doing anything to start winning there?
With so many aquisitions (storage, software) over the past several years, when will the innovation begin? Are there issues bringing these companies and new streams on income into the fold?
Question: Google’s Larry Page has said that their company wants to be known for more than search. They want to be trusted and known fore innovation and product beauty…working on things like energy. Does he see Dell sticking to cheap computers, servers, etc. or moving into other markets that need their expertise? What other areas?
Will Dell ever get into software/services? Like apple/amazon/msft?
Why do you think apple was so successful?
What’s your living room strategy as that space heats up?
What about a dell phone? PC sales are on the decline..
Could be a wonderful conversation, I really like it , thank you for sharing nice and resourceful resources.
My question is future of apple and its projects?