Dell: The PC Isn't Going Away

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While some tech vendors believe that the world has moved to the post-PC era, Dell is not one of them.

At the DellWorld conference, Dell founder Michael Dell explained the mission of his company, and why the PC still holds down the foundation. While PC’s are still important to Dell, Dell is no longer just a PC vendor.

“Dell is a very different business than it was five or ten years ago,” Dell said. “As we have seen our customers use IT differently, our business has evolved as well.”

Dell noted that his company started out as a product company and then as the products become increasingly powerful, Dell’s customers wanted Dell to know more about their businesses. As such, the new Dell is an end-to-end solutions provider, even as Dell still cares about the client PC device.

Dell’s decision to continue to back the PC, stands in contrast with rival HP that has decided to spin out its PC division.

“There are a billion and a half PC’s in the world today and that seems to me like a pretty big number,” Dell said. “There are estimates that there will be 2 billion PCs in a few years, so it’s a growth market.”

Dell explained that when you look at where computing actually happens, there are datacenters, but the client device is actually still quite important. That said, he noted that the client device is changing with tablets and smartphones.

“Those devices are generally augmenting the PC,” Dell said. “We don’t see the PC as going away at all. We see our customers continuing to use the PC as part of the total solution.”

Going a step further, Dell emphasized that his company’s PC presence also helps their enterprise business. According to Dell, client devices drive the vast majority of the usage for components that go inside all computing products from memory to disk drives. By being in the PC business, Dell is able to acheive better economies of scale for components.

“If you’re not in the client device you’re not able to provide a complete end-to-end solution,” Dell said.

Dell added that his company’s history has taught him that there is a connection from one device to another.

“As we work with customers to provide client devices and then servers, storage, systems management, networking and security, the foundation of that business for us is the client business,” Dell said. “To take away one part of the solution, we don’t think makes sense.”

While Dell is interested in the PC market, the company continues to face competition from multiple vendors, including Lenovo, which is now the world’s number two PC vendor.

“We at Dell are more focused on revenues and profits, as opposed to units sold,” Dell said. “Lenovo is a great competitor of ours and we have a lot of respect for them, but we have a different strategy in terms of providing a complete solution from the datacenter perspective and all the solutions that we provide.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.