Dell

Dell Inc. (formerly Dell Computer Corporation ) is a U.S. manufacturer of computers. The company is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.

Company History

1983 Michael Dell began selling computer components. In 1984 he founded with a $ 1,000 start-up capital, the PCs Limited, which was later renamed Dell Computer Corporation. Office of the company at that time was Austin, Texas. In 1985, the first own PC was developed.

In 1987, the company expanded to the UK and was the first time outside the USA. 1988, the IPO took place. A total of 3.5 million shares were sold at about $ 8.50. That same year, Dell began to sell to major clients. Opened in 1989, Dell provides a factory for the European market in Ireland. In Germany Dell has been represented since 1988 by its own subsidiary. 1990 Dell products were first sold through dealers.

In 1991 the first own notebook was included in the offer. 1993 the group exceeded the revenue of one billion U.S. dollars. Since 1996, the Dell products can also be ordered via the Internet.

In particular, the order on the Internet caused a strong company growth. In 2000, the daily turnover amounted to over the Internet 5 million U.S. dollars. However, the dot-com bubble caused a collapse in growth at Dell; the company had a total of 5700 points in 2001 as a result degrade. 2003, the annual sales reached 40 billion U.S. dollars. The company began selling printers under its own name, and consumer electronics. In 2003, Dell founded the business center in Bratislava ( Slovakia).

On 1 August 2005, the headquarters of Dell GmbH Langen was transferred to the Main Airport Center in Frankfurt am Main. On 1 September 2005, Dell opened in Halle a new sales and service center for serving midmarket customers and public customers. Currently, Dell employs approximately 103,000 employees worldwide, including more than 1,500 in Germany, while around 800 in Halle ( Saale ), 600 in Frankfurt am Main and 100 in Munich.

2006 Dell launched one of the largest product recalls in computer history after several Dell laptops had inflamed because of defective Sony supplied batteries. Also in 2006, took over the computer manufacturer Dell Alienware; the company will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of Dell. That same year, Dell introduced the thousandth employees in Germany.

In September 2006 Desktop PC with AMD processors were first added to the program after the company had been built exclusively Intel processors in this segment in the company's history.

After the production in Ireland was set in 2009, the European production site located in the Polish Łódź. It extends over 37,000 square meters and represents an investment of 200 million euros dar. addition, further investment by suppliers of the U.S. company in the amount of 53 million euros. Today, Dell employs around 1200 people in Łódź. Objective of establishing a plant in Europe was a better supply the European market, consequently, a shorter by about two days delivery time for German customers. In December 2009, Dell announced that the Polish plant was to be sold to the Taiwanese company Foxconn, provided that the European Union agree. The sale to Foxconn, however, did not materialize.

In September 2009, Dell took over for around 3.9 billion dollars, or $ 30 per share in cash, the IT service provider Perot Systems Corp.. In February 2010, Dell acquired the U.S. company KACE, a provider of solutions for system management.

In August 2010, Dell launched its first tablet computer " Streak " on the market. The device has a 5 -inch touch screen and can be surfing the Internet, making phone calls, browsing, listening to music and use it as a camera. The operating system sets a Dell Google's Android. In 2011, before the beginning of Dell Streak 7, of the resolution has a 7 -inch screen 800 × 480. Since April 2011, this unit is also available in Germany. In March 2011, Dell introduced with the Venue Pro its first smartphone on the German market. The smartphone works with the operating system Windows Phone 7 and has a slide out keypad.

In March 2012, Dell announced the acquisition of specialized firewalls and network security company SonicWALL. In July 2012, Dell took over the software manufacturer Quest for 2.4 billion dollars.

In September 2013 Michael Dell bought his company for 24.9 billion dollars ( 18.1 billion euros ), together with the financial investor Silver Lake and performs this now as sole owner. The delisting of the Company's shares on NASDAQ on 30 October 2013.

Organization and product range

President and chief executive officer of Dell, the company founder Michael Dell. CEO of Dell GmbH in Frankfurt am Main Barbara Wittmann, Jürgen Renz and Mark Mobius.

The product range includes PC's, workstations, notebook computers, storage systems, monitors, servers, printers, consumer electronics and smartphones. Dell sells its products primarily directly. Customers have the option to order via the Internet, by fax or by phone. The products are only created after the customer has placed his order.

Strategy

Dell uses mainly components from other manufacturers and therefore does not develop its own hardware, with the exception of the layout of the motherboards. Dell delivers his computers and laptops currently out with one of the operating systems Windows 8 and Windows 7 or Linux ( Ubuntu). Server (Red Hat or SUSE Linux) with Microsoft Windows Server, VMware or Linux comes preinstalled on customer requirements.

Due to the moderate earnings Dell launched in May 2007, a fundamental change in sales strategy. In addition to direct sales customers are addressed also through distributors and retailers since then. In the U.S., a first agreement was signed with Walmart to offer Dell products in 3500 U.S. stores.

In Germany since the end of August 2009 offers the discount chain Lidl Dell notebooks in its stores to as an action item. Since 2010, selected PC and notebook models sold by Dell in German Media Markt. Some online stores offer Dell laptops, such as Amazon.com, Conrad and Cyberport.

Dell has a few years ago started to change its positioning in the market and has developed from a pure hardware vendor to a provider of complete solutions and services. It also consulting services, in addition to network, server and storage products, as well as all data centers and data center infrastructure distributed. In this way, Dell intends to meet the needs of companies of different sizes, from small and medium-sized business to global corporations and the public sector. Dell has invested heavily in recent years in the development and expansion of the service area. Thus, the second German office was established in 2005 primarily in Halle / Saale, to serve from here SME customers and government authorities. Specifically, Dell has the service area expanded through a series of acquisitions; so Dell could gain a foothold through the acquisition of IT service provider Perot Systems in September 2009, also in the consulting business. Meanwhile, approximately 43,000 employees work in the service area of Dell, said about 15 percent of the Group total. Other important acquisitions in services in 2010 were Scalent Systems, a software manufacturer in the field of data center automation and Boomi, an integrator of solutions in Cloud Computing, 2011 SecureWorks, a provider of security solutions and KACE, a provider of applications for the management of systems in larger companies. In addition, there is a division of industry solutions in construction. Dell is here so far, primarily in IT solutions for active health care, there is Dell, according to a study by Gartner currently ranked # 1 in Europe.

Acquisitions

Dell has made the following acquisitions:

Indicators

Dell is according to market researcher IDC (Q2 2008) with 16.4% market share of the world's second- largest manufacturer of personal computers ( HP 18.9 %, Acer 9.9%, Lenovo 7.5%). In Germany, Dell is with a market share of 13.2 % currently in third place behind HP ( 14.4%) and Fujitsu Technology Solutions (13.4%) (IDC 2008).

Dell achieved a turnover of 61.5 billion U.S. dollars, earnings per share of $ 1.35 in fiscal year 2010/ 2011. In fiscal 2012, Dell posted net sales of about 62.071 billion U.S. dollars and employs 104,900 people worldwide. In the third quarter of 2012, Dell achieved a market share of 17.1 percent in worldwide sales of server systems.

Criticism

The electronics and PC industry is generally reputed to not consider sufficiently in construction contracts, employment law and health concerns of the workforce and environmental concerns. The production is increasingly shifting to the Far East and even here there are problems with unethical working conditions: The supported Greenpeace Public Eye Awards nominated the Taiwanese Dell supplier Foxconn 2011 for a negative price because the " wage dumping " and " unethical to illegal " working conditions at least 18 suicides of young Chinese migrant workers led. Greenpeace, Dell in terms of environmental protection on place 5 of 16 electronics manufacturers (as of November 2012; Location 1 is the most environmentally friendly ). Criticisms are especially dangerous chemical substances in the production chain as well as the disposal and recycling of products.