Fardreamer
Back in 1997, in the Fartner Symosium and ITxpo97 held at Orlando Florida, the CEO of the then Apple’s competitor DELL joined the chorus when a question was posed to him, asking him what he would do if he was in charge of Apple. His answer was something he would live to regret. “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,” Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT enthusiasts and executives who had come to attend the symposium.
Dell’s comment was followed up Steve Job’s keynote address at the Seybold trade show in September that year in
In January 2006 after eight years of slogging it out, Apple Inc., passed Dell Inc. in market value, $ 72.13 billion v. $71.97 billion at market close respectively. A year later in July 2007, Apple’s value was double of that of Dell’s, $127.81 billion vs. $63.65 billion, respectively. At the end of the year 2007, Apple’s market value passed 3 times that of Dell’s, $165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion, respectively. A few days back, Apple’s market value had passed four times that of Dell.
This just goes to show that the best of us swallow our words sometimes. Especially if it’s Apple we are talking about.
May 6, 2008
Dell is already an expensive computer but Mac is 4 times that expensive? I’m surprised to know that Michael Dell didn’t consider Steve Jobs as a threat to him back on the old days because as far as I know during the 90’s Mac is already popular. This must be the reason why Apple computer has surpassed Dell computer. They have taken their competitor too lightly!
May 6, 2008
What hurts Dell, as I’ve said many times, is their lack of good customer care. You buy a Dell, you are expected to get it fixed through Dell, and that means shipping the thing to their main HQ. How many Dell stores do you see? How many Apple stores do you see? Dell can make cheap computers because they don’t have that additional overhead for chains. It’s a stroke of genius, but it has its drawbacks.
May 8, 2008
I had no idea that Apple had grown that big o.o
And ScribesUnlimited -> I agree, their customer care leaves a lot to be desired, and their build quality has tanked.
I have 2 old Dell laptops (my current being a Lenovo) , one is nearly 7 years old, and the other just 3. The younger one is showing far more signs of wear and tear than the older one, and multiple aspects have already failed, like the keyboard, while the older one is going strong still:)
May 9, 2008
My Dell Inspiron laptop was DEAD in about 2 years, which is unheard of. I had problems with it 6 months after purchase — conveniently after the purchasing warranty had expired. A devious plan? *shifty eyes*
May 10, 2008
Yeah I agree. The worst part about Dell was the customer care…and whenever you called, you could never get anyone to speak english to you. Once I had a problem with my dell and I had to pay $150 over the phone for them to tell me to just reinstall the disks…and they didn’t even talk me through it. To say the least, I got my money back from them after fighting them for months…and soon after that my computer had completely died and nothing would save it…I switched to apple and they have the best customer service. You bring it to the store and if they can’t fix it there they will ship it out for you…but most of the times they are able to fix it for you. They are so nice there and speak ENGLISH!
May 18, 2008
I think that we all agree that Dell’s costumer care is so horrible. This is one of the things that are keeping the customers away from buying their unit. The customers are turning to Mac which has a higher price but with a good customer service. I wouldn’t blame them at all because what good can a company with a lower price but with a bad service.
May 20, 2008
I’ve never wanted a Dell; I briefly considered it when one of my earlier PCs died on me, but it was just a brief micro-speculation of a consideration that was easily dismissed.
I haven’t owned an Apple in a while, but with Apple having brick-and-mortar stores where one can take sick Macs to be fixed, they certainly have an edge over Dell.
By the way, Dell (the guy) seems to be an arrogant little cuss!
May 24, 2008
I think the title is a little misleading. It is not proper to say that apple is worth four dells, as good as apple may seem to some. You really need to delve deeper into the specific parts of the systems and compare them rather than make a bold statement like this. Good article, though.
July 2, 2008
I made the mistake of purchasing a Dell Inspiron a few years ago. It lasted a total of 8 months before it died on me. (just died!!!) I called customer service, it was still under warranty. Their customer service was such a shall we say pain, that I finally just gave up and bought a new mac. I gave the old (dead) Dell to the neighbor kid who’s a computer geek so he could use it for parts. I used to joke that I had a $700 paperweight!