Michael Dell Dismisses Tablet Threat To the PC Market 352
alphadogg writes with an excerpt from a Network World article: "The PC is not likely to be challenged by the tablet or the smartphone, and many users of the Internet on these devices will turn to the PC for a better experience, Michael Dell said in Bangalore on Monday. If you were going off to college and could only have one device, you would choose the PC over a smartphone or a tablet, said Dell, whose company also sells smartphones. 'If you could have two devices, then you would probably choose the phone before the tablet,' the Dell CEO added."
He's probably right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to do much REAL WORK(tm) on a tablet is an exercise in frustration. By the time you add a keyboard and mouse so that you can be even marginally productive you might as well get the tablet so that you can work even where/when there isn't a wireless network.
The tablet's niche is on the couch or the train or the bus.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:4, Insightful)
If Michal Dell wants to ignore the the metrics that made his company a household name in the first place, that's pretty damned stupid.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, why are you adding a mouse?
Because keyboard and touch screen is a combination that just doesn't work. I've tried it, and found it just easier to add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo rather than reaching across my keyboard to touch the tablet all the time. Touch screen cursor placement is finicky on the best of tablets. And any amount of typing beyond the short email is a hopeless productivity killer.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to do much REAL WORK(tm) on a tablet is an exercise in frustration.
What you say is true, but for most people, "real work" means text editing, taxes, Quicken, maybe some photo organizing. Any computer made since 2006 is more than adequate until XP goes dark in 2014. If people get on an 8-year upgrade cycle for desktops/laptops, Dell is in for a real hard decade.
Time to reprint a Slashdot comment! (Score:3, Insightful)
MICHAEL DELL
CEO and founder of Dell
From the time I was seven years old, I was captivated by blandness. When asked what kind of ice cream I wanted, the answer was always "Vanilla, please."
My favourite toy was an old sock that belonged to my grandfather. It was the most dull, lifeless white sock you had ever seen. I called it "Blandy". When I turned 13 my parents let me paint my room any colour I wanted. I picked a decidedly neutral beige paint. I didn't want any excitement in my room, just a calming dullness. My whole room was like that: beige walls, beige lampshades, beige bedding. The only contrast was when I would place Blandy on my pillow. My room was the ultimate in dull. Sitting in it was almost like floating in a sensory deprivation tank. Except you could see that glorious beige everywhere.
What are your memories of your first computer?
I bought my first computer when I was fifteen. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80. The silver-grey painted chassis caused too much excitement in my otherwise dull bedroom so I spray painted it beige. The cassette tape's door was a shiny bit of transparent plastic, far too eye catching. I used some 120 grit sandpaper to take off the glossiness. You couldn't read the tape labels through it after that, but I didn't care. It was a small price to pay in my quest for supreme dullness.
What modern technology do you wish you had growing up and why?
I've learned that technology on its own isn't what really matters. What's important is how dull it is. How you can get someone to spend their hard earned money on something then look at it and wonder "Why did I buy that?" To me, making items that has people doing just that, even before they receive their order confirmation, is the greatest thing ever.
Companies that go for excitement and innovation are certain to die. They have no future. Why, if it were up to me, I'd sell whatever company it was and give the money back to the shareholders. Printed on dull, beige cheques.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that a very large amount of people don't do what you would consider "real work"--they only want to check email, browse YouTube, and visit Facebook, and they only have PCs because it was the only way they could do those things previously. Michael Dell has a vested interest in telling people that PCs will rule forever, but I have to tell you, having a portable computer that you don't have to spend hours of maintenance on every week is really, really nice, especially in bed or on the couch.
Re:Mr Dell's reality distortion field (Score:5, Insightful)
Good bye Dell (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like he's got the same problem most other giants have had at some point, just before they start gong down hill. They refuse to acknowledge the changing tide around them, and are unable ( unwilling ) to adapt.
The first step is denial.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think he was ever all that smart? Dell didn't get to where it is through innovative products; it got there through, at best, innovative and efficient manufacturing and ordering and low prices. They made it easy to configure a PC or server exactly the way you want it with a large array of options, and purchase it, with a very low price. There's no product innovation there, their products were nothing more than white-box PCs. They just made it easy for people to buy them. Plus, they started with desktop PCs and later added servers and laptops; they followed the market. Did Dell ever create anything innovative or lead the market in any way (I mean, create a new market the way Apple did with the iPad, where many others tried to sell tablets and make them popular and no one cared, but then Apple made one and suddenly it's a whole new market and not some tiny niche)? Nope. They're like Walmart: they see stuff that other people are doing, copy it, and try to do it a little better and more efficiently and with lower prices and profit in the process.
Now it looks like they're getting a little set in their ways. Or, maybe he has the right idea: maybe he knows that if he tries to make a copycat tablet and sell it, that it's just going to bomb, since it seems that for whatever reason, only the iPad is actually selling like gangbusters in the tablet market. Part of this may be the tie-in to the Apple app store, which effectively locks out competition since you can't run iOS apps on non-Apple machines. So instead of trying to do a me-too product and fail, or just ignoring it altogether, he's trying to downplay it and convince people to stick with the products his company is good at. Remember, part of the job of a CEO is lying to people just like a salesman, to try to sell his company's shit, except worse since a CEO's public remarks can have huge effects on both his own company and the marketplace.
Re:Also, if you owned Apple (Score:1, Insightful)
I love how the folks with mod points love to prove folks right about the crappiness of the mod system.
Re:Only a threat in multiple computer households (Score:5, Insightful)
Michael Dell is usually right about that kind of thing. That's not because I'm any kind of fangirl, or because I used to work for him, just that he's historically been pretty good at predicting market trends. You said it yourself... it's a good replacement to a *second* computer, but you still need a real computer to type documents and actually create content for. Especially at a school.
What I'd like is a modern version of the "tablet" computers that Lenovo was selling 8 years ago. The kind where you could flip the screen around and use the thing as a tablet, or you could open it up and have a working laptop? Couple that with an ultraportable 13" laptop that tips the scales around 3lbs, and they could make a ton of money on it. Wouldn't even be that hard, they'd just have to rearrange the hinge design on the laptop I have right now (a Dell Vostro V130), and replace the LCD with a touchscreen. I'd even be willing to accept one that requires a stylus instead of finger input. It would be hugely useful. I would be willing to accept the extra bulk inherent in that kind of design in exchange for the increased usability, and I'd still have something that's more portable than the heavier 15" or 16" laptops most people buy.
Re:Only a threat in multiple computer households (Score:5, Insightful)
Dells primary audience is business, tablets are consumer items and rarely used in businesses.
Yeah, I remember when people around here used to say that about iPhones.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:4, Insightful)
And this information comes from...?
Personal histories, mine and thousands of other geeks I've talked to over the decades. Thousands of articles and editorials over the same span, etc.
Seriously, this is not a [citation needed] occasion. If you've been in the biz long enough, this is basic stuff.
No it isn't a [citation needed] moment, Dell and HP are the worlds biggest PC manufacturers because they are big in the business world. The consumer world is tiny compared to that.
The consumer is the poor cousin to business, businesses drive sales.
I've been in the Biz long enough to know that, it's basic stuff.
Re:By the same token (Score:4, Insightful)
In 2007 laptops sales were overtaking desktop sales and by late 2008 in the US laptops outsold desktops. The reality was that most people did not want to upgrade machines, that the MS issue made buying machine cheaper than upgrading, and that $400 for 2 or three years of use was not outlandish to many. The simplicity of the machines made the popular. Somethings could not be done on the machine, but enough could. Coincidently, Gateway, who assembled desktops, sold itself at a bargain price around that time, and one unit was defunct by 2009.
Unimaginative and backward thinking business types think consumer attitudes will never change and the way things are done now will always be the way things are done. I don't know if I would ever move to a a tablet for my primary machine, but I do know that several years ago i moved to a laptop as my primary machine, having retired my desktop. Even more interesting is i have almost retired my 17" laptop and use a MacBook Air for the vast majority of my work. All my daily computing resources fit into a case that is about the size of a sunday magazine and a few inches thick.
I would argue that Dell needs to do something creative at this point. It is not doing badly but has seen no real growth since 2009 when it recovered. Essentially two years stagnant. In reality, the stock price, inflation adjusted, is the same as 1997, so that is 14 years of, on average, no growth. Dell, because it is dependent on the whims of MS, cannot really do anything to break out of the death cycle that in plaguing the PC industry, so it claims the cycle does not exist, in much the same way that an addict might deny the effect of the drugs. Something is coming to take over the PC. The PC is not working really well for a lot of people. It may not be tablets, but will be something.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not everything most people do. That's 95% of what most people do, and all they think of, but losing the other 5% becomes a real killer. Manipulating photos, video, having terabytes of storage, printing out coupons, printing out most anything, audio capture/editing, etc., etc. I've yet to meet someone who doesn't have one major niche purpose for their computers.
What the hell kind of maintenance are you doing for hours every week? If you're talking about security updates, well you're in for a big surprise when worms for iOS / Android start spreading. If you're talking about disk cleanup, well having a piddly amount of storage is a huge negative, not a positive that you can't do it anymore. Other than that, I can't think of what "maintenance" you need to do all the time.
Re:Also, if you owned Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
And being average is why his company is now sinking.
Re:He's probably right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, what you described *is* innovation. It's like the Japanese bringing just-in-time manufacturing to the auto industry. It's just supply side innovation, rather than client-side.
Re:Also, if you owned Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. That's the ENTIRE purpose of Microsoft's $150M "investment" in Apple. It was an investor confidence move, and not a move that was to save Apple. (Remember, Apple paid $430M for NeXT. Surely if Apple needed, Jobs could've found $150M in spare change from that).
Microsoft sold that stock when they could a few years later for 3 times as much money.
Steve Jobs knew he needed to calm the markets, and what better way than going after the world's largest software manufacturer to make some investments. The money was trivial. The biggest news was development of Microsoft Office for Mac and IE. (The Mac Business Unit at Microsoft at one point had a nicer version of Office than Windows' Office).
Of course, a Microsoft-hating Apple user wouldn't admit it, but they wouldn't admit that Apple "needed" that $150M either. In the end, that whole $150M was just an investor confidence thing, coupled with Microsoft's commitment for at least 5 years of developing Office for Mac.
Jobs just reached out to one of this oldest associates knowing they both had problems - Microsoft and antitrust, Apple and investor confidence, and cunningly engaged in a plan that mutually benefits both.