Dell Trims AMD-Based Consumer PC Offerings
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Don't look on the Dell Web site for home AMD-based PCs. The company is selling them only in brick and mortar stores or via phone orders now.
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Part of Dell Computer's transition strategy is to no longer focus all its interests on one side of the technology market exclusively. That was made clearer today with another acquisition of a service-oriented software provider.
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Dell has scaled back the range of consumer PCs with processors from AMD that it sells on its Web site, focussing almost exclusively on systems with Intel processors.Dell&#39;s entire line of AMD-based laptops for consumers, as well as most of its AMD-based consumer desktops, will now be sold only through Dell&#39;s 10,000 retail outlets worldwide, said Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden.Except for one desktop, the Inspiron 531, which includes the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ processor, Dell will focus its online consumer sales on Intel-based PCs. For businesses, Dell will continue to sell a range of AMD-based systems online.The decision, made this week, could be a setback for AMD. The Intel rival received a big boost in 2006 when Dell began offering its chips in desktops, laptops, and servers.AMD-based systems tend to be priced lower than Intel-based systems, so it makes sense for Dell to ship AMD products through retail channels, said Dean McCarron, founder and principal at Mercury Research.&quot;[Dell&#39;s decision] is not that surprising given that AMD&#39;s primary strength is the consumer retail channel,&quot; he said. Price points on PCs tend to be lower in the retail market, and retail buyers are more sensitive to cost than online buyers, McCarron said.AMD said the move was part of a strategy to offer a wider range of AMD-based PCs through retail channels. &quot;We are always evaluating product offerings and how customers can access them,&quot; Camden said.Not many consumers buy systems based on the processor type, she said, and few distinguish between AMD and Intel processors. Users select PCs based mostly on price and what they will use them for, such as surfing the Web or playing music and videos, she said.Dell has expanded its in-store offerings over the past six months by signing up more retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart in the U.S., Tesco in the U.K., and Bic Camera in Japan.The retail strategy helped the company expand its lead over Hewlett-Packard as the largest U.S. PC vendor in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to IDC. However, HP remained the world&#39;s largest PC dealer, topping Dell, Acer and Lenovo, IDC said.Hewlett-Packard already offers more AMD-based PCs in retail than online, so Dell&#39;s decision isn&#39;t a first, McCarron said. Until it won over top-tier PC vendors several years ago, AMD relied on the retail market and white-box vendors for its chip sales.The effect of Dell&#39;s strategy shift on AMD remains to be seen, McCarron said. It is a large and important PC vendor, but it is also a relatively new partner for AMD.AMD has suffered some setbacks recently, reporting five straight quarterly losses and delaying shipments of some new desktop and server processors. Its market share was 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, down a fraction from the year before, while Intel&#39;s market share climbed slightly to 77 percent, according to IDC.
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The computer maker will sell its PCs through Digital China, while Dell will try to target upscale consumers in the country.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell has stopped taking orders for one model of its high-end desktop PCs, citing issues related to overclocking quad-core processors from Intel. Dell's XPS 720 H2C is a $5,939 computer designed to boost video-game performance by combining two Nvidia graphics cards with Intel's Core 2 Extreme chip, "overclocked" by Dell to run at a higher frequency than Intel intends. The computer uses a liquid radiator to dissipate the extreme heat generated by the setup, a more expensive design than standard air-cooled PCs. On Wednesday, Dell told customers it would no longer accept orders for the "Bin +3" version of the computer, which runs Intel's QX6800 Extreme Edition processor at 3.73GHz instead of the 2.93GHz it was designed for. "We apologize for having to do this, [but the] truth is that we do not have a line of sight to enough supply of QX6800 processors that can tolerate the Bin+3 overclocking," Dell's digital media manager, Lionel Menchaca, said on a company blog. "At this point, our engineering team is doing everything they can to get more Bin+3s out of our original supply, but this is expected to be a slow process," he said. Dell asked its customers to cancel their orders and choose an XPS 720 PC with a slightly slower QX6800 chip or with a slightly less powerful QX6700 chip running at the same speed. Intel stressed that there was no shortage of the chips themselves. "They're taking these units that run at 2.93GHz and overclocking them, although we guarantee them at 2.93 only," said Intel spokesman George Alfs. "We're certainly proud of the headroom of the Core architecture, and we're aware of them doing this, but once they start overclocking, it's their responsibility to support and warrantee the chips." Dell thought initially they would have enough 2.93GHz chips that would tolerate overclocking. "It just comes down to physics -- a design can only tolerate so much voltage," Menchaca said on the blog. "When we started taking orders for the 720 H2C, we had a fixed supply of the QX6800 chips that seemed ample at the time, but once we found out how rare the Bin+3 variety was, we started combing our supply chain for even more. "Last week, our backlog forecast started to pass our best estimates for finding Bin+3 chips. It just did not make sense to take any additional orders when we couldn't tell when we would be able to fulfill them." This is the second time in recent months that Dell has delayed shipments of PCs in its gaming and enthusiast family. In August 2006, the company stopped shipping the similar XPS 700 model while it fixed a design mistake in the cooling assembly.
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Dell is slashing prices on corporate IT solutions by up to 22%, but only for US customers. The cuts come on the back of impressive trading figures and lower component costs for Dell, and cover enterprise servers, desktops and laptops.
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Dell on Monday dropped prices on select servers, workstations, desktops, and laptops aimed at corporate customers, saying it was passing along lower component costs to buyers.
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Same old (inaccurate) speculation, different names Analysis Apple is the new Dell. Yes, now that the PC giant has finally, after a decade of speculation, signed up to buy processors from AMD and end its Intel-only policy, we can now expect ten further years of similar rumours that Apple's about to adopt the Athlon too.â¦
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Entry-level systems Dell has announced its first desktop PCs based on AMD chips. Both machines are pitched at entry-level business and mainstream consumer buyers.â¦
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Though there may be fewer consumer notebook and desktop computers with AMD processor options available online through Dell Direct today than there were last week, an AMD spokesperson told BetaNews that Dell is not backing away.
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Dell Inc. DELL.O on Monday said  it had cut prices by as much as fifth for a range of products  aimed at U.S. corporate customers, as the computer maker passed  along savings from cheaper components.
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The Linux camp's ears perked up earlier this week when Dell said it planned to unveil a new line of certified, Linux-loaded desktop and laptop PCs. But business users who want to buy a Dell machine with the open-source operating system preinstalled won't have that Linux luxury in the near-term.
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Dell Inc.  is leaving the LCD  television business to focus on its core PC products amid an  ongoing company overhaul by founder Michael Dell, Taiwan media  reported on Thursday.
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Company discontinues many consumer electronics lines to focus on PCs--and profitability.
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Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) is giving its corporate customers a break, announcing price cuts on hardware ranging from enterprise servers and workstations, to desktops and notebooks for large business and institutional customers.
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InfoWorld - Dell will officially launch its first three consumer PCs running the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux OS on Thursday, two desktops and an Inspiron E1505n notebook PC.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell Inc. Tuesday pointed to its adoption of processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) for pushing it to US$677 million in profit for the third quarter, though the company has delayed reporting final numbers due to an accounting investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Dell's preliminary results mark anÂ improvement over the third quarter last year, when it reported $13.91 billion in revenue and a profit of $606 million. Dell reported revenue of $14.38 billion for the quarter, which ended Nov. 3, 2006. Dell did not offer an official comparison to the year-earlier figures, however. Dell reported earnings of $0.30 per share for the third quarter in 2006, beating the estimates of analysts who had expected Dell to earn $0.24 per share on revenue of $14.44 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Financial. The company was scheduled to report its earnings last Thursday, but delayed the move because it was trying to cooperate with investigations by the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Company leaders had cited the same reason after they missed a deadline for notifying the SEC of their second quarter earnings. They have still not filed that report, called a Form 10-Q. Company executives were not available to comment on the results. The company filed the numbers in a press release only, skipping the traditional conference call with reporters and analysts. Dell pointed to its success in selling computers powered by AMD processors for its impressive numbers. After missing its earnings target for the first quarter, Dell said in May it would finally diversify from selling computers with chips from Intel Corp. Still, Dell is having a rocky year. In June, Chief Executive Kevin Rollins promised to rebound from weak earnings by investing $100 million in customer service and by using fewer rebates in setting PC prices. But in August, Dell was forced to recall 4.1 million defective laptop batteries. Next, Dell acknowledged it was under investigation by the SEC, and, last week, lost its status as world's largest PC vendor to rival Hewlett-Packard Co.(HP). HP turned up the pressure last week when it reported net income of $1.7 billion for the fourth quarter, more than four times its mark for that period last year. Â