What The Dell is going on?

What's going on with my favourite pc company? They keep launching wave after wave of consumer products that nobody wants. They may be as reliable as ever, they may have the latest technology, but is there any place for them in the consumer's home?





Take the recently launched XPS 17 3D laptop. Drooling with high performance processors, amazing LCD clarity, and unbelievable 3d graphics, it's a laptop that weighs 8.2 pounds, SIX times heavier than an i-Pad. More doorstop than laptop. It also costs almost $2000, about the same price you could pick up a decent 3D LCD TV and Blu Ray for. Does anyone want to sit 20 inches away from a mega powerful LCD with sci fi 3D glasses on? Dell will argue that its hard core gamers do. All 357 of them, so glad they will be happy.

Last year, it was the Dell Streak, a 5 inch tablet-cum-smartphone. At 5 inches it was too big to be a phone, too small to be a tablet. A year later they upgraded it to a 7 inch, still too small to be a tablet, with a staggeringly poor battery life of just two hours. Both products launched with out of date versions of Android, and there are rumours the latest 10 inch version can't be upgraded to Android Honeycomb - THE future software platform for non Apple apps. Comically, Dell blames the failure of the Streak in the US on the "immature tablet market there." Workman, tools, bad, blame; it's a simple conundrum, but one their boffins can't seem to find the answer to.

The Adamo - now you see it,
now you don't. 

A year earlier it was the Adamo. "We wanted something that is thin, elegant and offers quality that beats competitors," Dell proudly boasted when they launched it in 2009. That might be what you wanted, but what customers wanted was a thin, light and stylish notebook like a Macbook Air, without the hefty premium of the Mac. Instead the Adamo was the world's most expensive and heaviest 13" notebook launched at the height of the GFC, and with a paltry 128GB of flash non-expandable memory. And so one of the most beautiful laptops ever created sank without trace.

Depressingly the list goes on. The netbook phenomena should have been meat and drink to the mass market Dell. They launched their Mini 9 netbook six months after Asus Eee PC took the market by storm, and then didn't put a hard drive in it, only an 8GB flash drive. It bombed. They launched it with a 12" version. That bombed too.

And when they do get it right, they delete the product. In 2008, it deleted its sexy XPS 1330, at the height of its popularity, and months later dropped the popular XPS brand altogether. "We want XPS to be a product marque, rather than a product in itself," they declared. Translated : "we have completely lost the plot and the customer. Let HP and Apple win the war." They have had to resurrect the XPS brand, god damn those meddling customers.

The Inspiron Cash Cow.

Dell is still the world's no 2 consumer PC brand, driven by its mass market Inspiron 15" laptop, which accounts for over 80% of its consumer volume. It also doesn't make them any money. The Inspiron may have had a facelift, a shot of botox and got a bit of colour in its cheeks, but it basically remains a Dell Latitude in disguise, and sold at half the price. Which begs the question what exactly have the consumer executive team been doing since they were put together in 2007 at considerable expense?

Launching turkeys each Christmas, but at least they got the theming right. (It takes one to know one.)

A former Motorola exec (now Dell)

makes his technology vision clear in 2007.

By 2011, phones have 12

Megapixel cameras.

He was head of products.

Dell took most of it's new management from Motorola's  mobile division, headed by Ron Garriques. This was the same Motorola and the same people that had enjoyed huge success with the ground breaking Razr phone. The same Motorola and the same people who then completely destroyed their mobile phone division and were publicly labelled 'incompetent' by a former advisor in 2008.

So what happens when you cross breed a team of Razr sharp one trick ponies with another? Er, more of the same. Or to put it simpler, more of the Inspiron. At least the Inspiron has had a much longer shelf life. Unlike Ron Garriques, who has long since disappeared. Unfortunately it will take Dell a few years and millions more to weed out the rest of the former Motorola mob.

Michael Dell 1997, on being asked what he
would do with Apple Corp.

Dell's consumer range always look amazing, no question. They have former Nike and Apple design heads to ensure that. It seems the problem lies with the technologists driving the product development agenda with an amazing disregard for the market and the consumer. Then there is a management obsessed with internal politics and restructures, leaving a legacy of a "warring tribe" mentality that they brought with them after decimating Motorola. Dell will continue to be successful thanks to their corporate clients, incredible global distribution channels and a one trick legend; long live the Inspiron. No doubt crammed with more and more crapware, the next clumsy edition of Windows, and another facelift or three.

Meanwhile Apple (my least favourite IT company) will continue to dazzle us. Depressing.