BW on Dell

How the PC maker's once-revolutionary sales strategy may actually be holding it back. (from BW)

HP has narrowed the gap in productivity and price.
Will Dell work with AMD? And let Google put its software on its desktops?

People don't wish to shop the 'old' way:

"The world is clearly changing around Dell. The once-torrid growth in sales of personal computers has slowed, to about 5% a year. More surprising, consumers seem less enamored of buying their tech wares over the Web or phone. According to researcher NPD Group, the percentage of PC sales done via the phone and Web fell last year, and the share of sales through U.S. retail stores rose, as people flocked to shops to fiddle with new gear such as digital-music players, digital cameras, and slick laptops."

"That's a difficult development for Dell. It spends less on research and development ($463 million) than Apple Computer ($534 million), despite being four times Apple's size. "Not investing in R&D works great in the commoditized PC world," says Vinnie Muscolino, general partner with Babson Capital Management. "It doesn't work as well in other areas.""

"Putting more money into R&D. Selling through retail stores. Breaking with Intel. None of these steps sound anything like Dell. The fact that analysts are raising these ideas underscores how dramatically the times are changing. If Rollins and Dell want to keep up the company's image as one of the great stock market performers of all time, they may have to think different."