HP Pulls Away from Dell in iSuppli Q4 2006 Rankings
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Today, the first preliminary numbers for worldwide PC unit shipments from electronics research firm iSuppli are in: Dell lost 1.6% in global PC market share between 2005 and 2006, and its PC shipments declined 8.6% for the year. Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, gained 2.7% of market share for the year, and shipped more than 20% more PCs than Dell during the fourth quarter.
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Fitch Ratings has upgraded Hewlett-Packard Company's (HP) ratings as  follows:  --Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'A+' from 'A';  --Senior unsecured debt to 'A+' from 'A';  --Senior credit facility to 'A+' from 'A'.
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(InfoWorld) - Underlining its expansion from online to retail sales, Dell launched desktop and notebook PCs Tuesday at Macy's department store in New York. The company announced nine new Inspiron desktops and notebooks and an XPS M1330 notebook, all available in a choice of eight shell colors. "The Dell of today is vastly different from the Dell of six months ago or even last week," said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president of Dellâs consumer product group. "We're here at Macy's in New York City. That alone is different for Dell, being in a department store or any kind of retail setting at all." Dell even set up a portable kiosk to take orders for the new PCs in a temporary space it will occupy at Macy's for the next two weeks, he said. The new Inspiron notebooks cost $749 for the model 1521 to $999 for the model 1720, with a choice of processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices. The Inspiron 1420 comes with an additional choice of Microsoft's Windows Vista or the Ubuntu Linux operating system, for $799. The Inspiron desktops start at $349 for models 530, 530s, 531, and 531s, all supporting up to 500GB of disk space to store digital media files, with the model 530 offering a choice between Windows and Linux. The XPS M1330 notebook costs $1,299 with a 13.3-inch widescreen display, weighs under 4 pounds, and comes with a one-year subscription to Dell's Online Backup service, where users can store 10GB of files on Dell servers for remote data access. In an effort to bolster its sliding market share and quarterly profits,Â Dell began selling certain PC models at Wal-MartÂ retail stores on June 10, marking the first time it had strayed from the direct sales model. Dell rose to prominence by cutting its costs through eliminating retail middlemen and selling its PCs through only its Web site, phone lines, and catalogs. That system began to fail in 2006, as competitors cut costs and Hewlett-Packard passed Dell to become the world's largest PC vendor. Now Dell is in the midst of a corporate reorganization announced May 31 that includesÂ laying off 10 percent of its 88,100 workers. Dell hopes its new retail presence will allow it to fix a strategic mistake. By trying to beat its competitors through low prices in recent years, Dell found itself spending all its publicity efforts promoting its least exciting products, Gruzen said. Selling PCs in retail stores gives Dell an opportunity to showcase its premium PC models and bring new luster to its corporate image at the same time. "This is really just a hint of what we're doing to get these exciting new products into customers' hands," Gruzen said. "We have a broader retail strategy, and over the coming months, we will announce more partnerships, both with Wal-Mart and with other retailers." Also on Tuesday, Dell unveiled a new marketing tagline -- "yours is here" -- that shares many values with HP's "the computer is personal again" campaign. Both companies are increasing the number of options they give customers to personalize PCs and bundling tools that make it easier to handle personal tasksÂ such asÂ digital photos and music as well as business jobs. Dell emphasized those increased choices with its color options for each PC, including pink, yellow, green, red, and blue, as well as standard white and black. An increasing number of PC vendors will soon begin to follow that pattern, trying to differentiate themselves with flashy style and design instead of solely through technical detailsÂ such asÂ processing power, according to a report released this week by Forrester Research. "The consumer PC industry is entering the Age of Style, a time in which radical form factor innovations, increased aesthetic diversity, and consumer choice and personalization will determine which models, and which PC vendors, win or lose," Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder said in the report.
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Shares of Hewlett-Packard Co. , the No. 1 manufacturer of PCs and printers, fell 4 percent on Wednesday after its quarterly results underwhelmed some investors and raised questions about its growth momentum.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) held on to its lead in the disk storage systems market in the second quarter, but saw a decline in revenue and market share, according to a survey by market researcher IDC published Friday.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has stopped selling workstations based on Intel Corp.'s Itanium 2 microprocessor, a company spokeswoman confirmed Friday.
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Dell Inc's pain was Hewlett-Packard Co's salvation during its latest fiscal quarter, judging by the numbers that HP has posted.
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But still in fourth place Dell regained a healthy chunk of the server market according to the analysts at IDC, suggesting "the new Dell" push has taken a foothold.â¦
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Dell has taken an aggressive pricing strategy in its competition with Apple in the music player space. Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox reported in his blog today that Dell has dropped pricing on the 15
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(InfoWorld) - Even as PC sales continue double-digit growth, industry revenue is likely to decline 2.5 percent to US$198.5 billion in 2006, according to a forecast released Friday by Gartner Inc. Worldwide PC shipments are scheduled to rise 10.5 percent over last year, reaching 233.7 million units. The disparity comes because PC vendors have been slashing the prices of desktops and notebooks as they hustle to compete with each other. Another force pushing computer prices down is a series of recent price cuts by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on their processors, the most expensive part of a PC. Now, as the holiday sales season approaches, things could get even worse for vendors like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. In additional to wrestling with each other, they will also have to compete with consumer electronics companies, said George Shiffler, a research director at Gartner. Shoppers have a limited number of dollars to spend on electronics. That spells trouble for PC vendors since the price of a low-end desktop is comparable to a smartphone and its accompanying service contract, he said. Flat panel TVs will also compete with PCs, since excess production capacity has lowered LCD (liquid crystal display) prices and producers are expected to cut prices further with aggressive holiday discounts. Even Microsoft Corp.'s impending launch of the new Vista OS will produce only a temporary rise in sales, Shiffler said. The Gartner study echoes weak financial results at Dell, the world's largest PC vendor. Dell blamed cost cutting and weak demand for $14.1 billion in revenue for the quarter ended Aug. 4. That number was up only 5 percent over the same period last year although Dell sold 11.6 percent more computers worldwide, climbing from 8.7 million in the second quarter of 2005 to 9.7 million this year. Looking past 2006, the flood of low-cost PCs will drive brisk sales in emerging markets through 2008, but mature markets like the U.S. will soon slump to single-digit growth, Gartner said.
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Just five months after its &#36;19 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. gave Hewlett-Packard Co. the No. 1 ranking in worldwide personal computer shipments, a new batch of market numbers delivered some stomach-turning news to HP &amp;#151; rival Dell Inc. had just snatched the top spot right back.
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By Jordan Robertson Associated Press  SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Dell Inc. , the world's  largest PC maker, said on Monday it has left the low-end  consumer PC market in China and cut its overall growth target  for the country this year due to stiff competition in the  segment.
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DECEMBER 03, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Hewlett-Packard Co. said yesterday that it has abandoned plans to integrate a number of advanced technologies it acquired in its 2002 purchase of Compaq Computer Corp.
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In a security analysts' conference this morning, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd's message did not exactly follow the holiday spirit. Another round of cost-cutting at what can now be called the world's #1 PC manufacturer will be under way. During the first stage, which began in July 2005, the company let go of 15,300 employees; thus far, layoffs have not been mentioned for the next round, though it's not unlikely.
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The world&#39;s top PC vendor, Hewlett-Packard, beat competitors Dell, Lenovo, and Apple to provide the best online customer support, according to a survey released on Tuesday by The Customer Respect Group.HP was also rated as providing the best online customer service among a sample of 18 technology companies surveyed, ahead of Intuit, Xerox, Microsoft, and Lexmark, according to the survey, which rated online support for the first quarter of 2008.Using metrics, including Web site usability, content accessibility, and responsiveness to queries, the survey independently measured a customer&#39;s interaction with a technology company via the Internet, the company said.Dell lagged in 12th place behind hardware vendors HP, Lenovo, Apple, and Gateway, according to the survey. Dell has a good community site linked from the home page, but the support pages are difficult to locate, said Terry Golesworthy, president of The Customer Respect Group.&quot;I think the story with Dell is that they have excellent materials and content, but it is not always as usable by the more naive users,&quot; Golesworthy said. Dell needs to mature support to cater to new users without neglecting the self-service experts, Golesworthy said.Apple&#39;s product offerings are fairly simple compared to Dell&#39;s, and so is its online support, Golesworthy said. Apple provides no chat or e-mail support options and encourages users to contact Apple through stores and by telephone to resolve issues.Apple&#39;s message may be about being simple, but a major glitch could become a big problem as self-help provided by Apple is minimal, Golesworthy said. Apple has plenty of technical articles on its Web site, which could be hard to locate at critical times.While some issues linger, vendors are finding better use of technologies&#160;such as&#160;RSS, online chat, e-mail, forums, and self-support Web content to support novice and expert PC users, the survey said.Technical customers are generally well serviced on location, so companies are looking to provide more basic information to support novice PC users, Golesworthy said. The documentation on some Web sites is being aligned for novice users to first identify a problem, then download the relevant drivers and programs to solve problems.Companies are also adopting more interactive and real-time techniques to provide customer support, the survey said. Online chat is challenging e-mail as a support option, with more than 50 percent of companies surveyed including online chat, an improvement from 30 percent six months ago.Online chat provides quicker response, cuts down on customer support costs, and eliminates user concerns about speaking to support agents with foreign accents, Golesworthy said.Some Web sites had data-intensive home pages that took time to load, but it could become commonplace as companies try to provide better and more interactive support to users, the survey said.Two upcoming technologies -- remote support and intelligent monitoring -- could help improve customer support provided by vendors, Golesworthy said. With remote access, technicians will assume control of a machine from a remote location to fix a problem. Instead of wading through pages of content to diagnose an issue, intelligent monitoring will provide a clearer choice for users to diagnose and resolve issues.Sun was rated as having the simplest Web site, followed by Xerox, Microsoft, and Apple. Intuit was rated as being most responsive to customers&#39; problems, followed by Microsoft, Symantec, and HP.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ.N and   Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O were among the fastest-growing   data storage providers in the second quarter, while EMC Corp.   EMC.N and Dell Inc. DELL.O lagged overall market growth,   researcher IDC said on Thursday.