I believe the hard reality that has been setting in for Dell recently is that HP has been handing its backside to the company at an alarming rate. If you take into the account that the HP/Compaq combo has been doling out a real one-two punch to Dell’s bottom line, I don’t think anyone can really dismiss Dell’s anxious behavior as it jumped into bed with Ubuntu so readily.
But what is the underlying reason for HP doing so well? Is it a better product? I should say not as I have found Dell notebooks to be a much more reliable product than the Compaq notebooks, from my own experience. As for the desktop products, I would say that each is on even footing with one serious difference – brick and mortar retailers pushing HP’s products while Dell remains, by and large, a catalog/Web site outfit.
See, when I as a consumer can walk into Best Buy, Costco, etc. and find myself in a place where I can get my hands on PC in real time, not limiting myself to commercials and pictures, this adds immediate temptation to buy. But to the best of my knowledge, Dell simply does not offer this whatsoever; this could become a growing problem.
In today’s “give it to me now” society, the idea of needing to wait for a PC to be shipped to the buyer is, quite frankly, a deterrent rather than a turn on. With any luck for Dell, it will be able to figure out a way around this problem before things become too sticky. Because as things stand now, the company has a real problem on its hands.
[tags]dell,hp,computers,notebooks,desktop[/tags]