Dell’s (DELL) fiscal third-quarter earnings fell 54 percent to $337 million, while revenue declined 15 percent to $12.9 billion.

The personal-computer maker saw revenue in its small and medium business unit slip 19 percent from the year-earlier period, while its consumer business was down 10 percent. In a statement, Michael Dell, its chief executive, said that the launch of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7 has been “very well received” by consumers and businesses, and that the company will see those results more in the fourth quarter.

Dell also highlighted its performance in China, where sales grew 8 percent. Combined sales in China, India, Brazil and Russia rose 5 percent.

The company is likely to discuss its recent acquisition of Perot Systems, though investors may also want to hear more about its smart-phone plans and how it’s competing with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which reported a revenue drop as well as a purchase of its own last week.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Cash-strapped consumers have been slow to buy personal computers in the recession. But with the launch of Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) new Windows 7 operating system Thursday, PC makers are aiming to reverse that trend–and then some.

Companies are expecting that Windows 7’s improved features over earlier Microsoft operating systems, including Vista and XP, will lure more consumers into stores. And they are betting that heightened demand will allow them to stanch recent price declines in the market.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), Dell Inc. (DELL), Toshiba America Inc. and Acer Inc., among others, are releasing a flood of high-end laptops with slim cases and glossy designs, and new one-piece touch-screen desktops, that they hope consumers will be willing to pay a premium for.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Many big tech hardware makers are expanding into services. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) last year bought Electronic Data Systems; Dell (DELL) agreed last month to buy Perot Systems; and Xerox (XRX) cut a deal for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), also last month.

Software giant Oracle (ORCL), however, is expanding into hardware, and has no interest in buying a services company, said Chief Executive Larry Ellison at an event for financial analysts on Thursday.

“We are really brilliant or we’re idiots,” Ellison said of his company’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems (JAVA), a deal that is currently being held up by European antitrust regulators.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

And then there were five–defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its climate–change policy, that is.

Apple (AAPL) today resigned its membership in the Chamber “effective immediately.” That’s a harsher tone than the other departures–three utilities said they’d let their membership lapse at the end of the year, and Nike (NIKE) simply quit the Chamber’s board of directors.

At issue, again, is the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to the Obama administration’s climate policy, most notably the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.

Apple has recently been on a green crusade to catch up to tech rivals Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) which have a shinier environmental reputation. And of course, Al Gore is on the Apple board.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The tech world came to a halt briefly on Wednesday as people watched, blogged, and tweeted Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs’s appearance at an event unveiling a new line of iPods. Out of the spotlight another computer maker, Dell (DELL), made a product announcement of its own. Sort of.

Dell offered “a glimpse,” to use its language, of a new model of its style-conscious Adamo laptop that is less than a centimeter thick. The computer, called the Adamo XPS, is 9.99 millimeters thick, to be precise. That measurement is the reason the company chose to announce its existence on Wednesday (Get it? It’s 9/9/09). The current model is 16.5 millimeters thick.

Calling this an announcement might be an overstatement. Dell’s press release was just four sentences long, and there’s only a single picture of the new computer on the Adamo Web site.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

VMworld, the annual conference hosted by software maker VMware, is fast becoming one of the hot tech conferences, in large part because VMware’s technology has become an important selling point for tech-equipment makers like Dell (DELL) and Cisco (CSCO) Systems. There are likely to be dozens of new product announcements made at the conference, which kicks off Monday.

One company isn’t waiting. Arista Networks on Wednesday announced it has developed software for its gear that makes it easier to manage servers that run VMware’s “virtualization” software. A virtualized server can run up to 20 times the number of programs as one without the software, which is a big efficiency improvement for information-technology departments. But it’s also created a new problem: How do you keep track of everything running on these servers and make sure they can be accessed through the network, which is made up of physical devices called switches?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Dell (DELL) has confirmed that it is developing mobile devices for China Mobile (CHL), Reuters reports. The new device is called the mini3i. The WSJ notes that the new device will support applications from China Mobile’s online store, launched today.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The tech services business has been hot for the last year or so, since H-P (HPQ) bought IT outsourcing giant EDS in May for more than $13 billion. H-P and IBM (IBM), the market leader in services, are now going head to head for big outsourcing deals. PC giant Dell (DELL) is also trying to expand its own services offerings, and smaller players are trying to grow their market share and profits as they look to capitalize on what’s expected to be a wave of new acquisitions in the area.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Apple is now calling its MacBook laptops “the world’s greenest lineup of notebooks” instead of “the world’s greenest family of notebooks” in response to a recommendation by the Better Business Bureau’s advertising division.

The division came to the recommendation after rival computer maker Dell (DELL) challenged Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook marketing, which refers, among other things, to the devices’ energy usage, packaging and recyclable components.

Dell’s complaints, according to a report published by the Bureau’s National Advertising Division, include Apple’s reference to its gold ratings by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT — ratings Dell said it and other PC makers have also received.

It also pointed out four “pillars” in Apple’s MacBook ads — recyclability, reduced packaging, less toxic materials and increased energy efficiency — and claimed that “Apple must, but does not, establish superiority over all of its competitors in all four pillars to support its broad superiority claim…many competing laptops offer the same characteristics it cites as the basis of superiority (e.g., recyclability).”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Until three weeks ago, few people outside corporate data centers knew much about deduplication technology, which makes data storage more efficient by culling repetitive documents. That changed when data storage companies NetApp (NTAP) and EMC (EMC) got into a bidding war last month for a leading provider of the heretofore obscure software.

Their target is Data Domain (DDUP), for which EMC is offering $30 a share and NetApp $25 a share. While the clash surprised people who don’t know about the technology, it was no shock for Darren Thomas, who heads Dell’s (DELL) data storage division. “We always knew” that deduplication was hot, he says.

This week, Dell jumped into the fray when it announced a new deduplication box that combines technology from software maker CommVault (CVLT) with Dell hardware. The new product – along with new deduplication services that Dell is offering – may give a hint into the company’s M&A strategy, which has been taking shape in recent months.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

There’s still no mobile phone from Dell (DELL), despite plenty of chatter about that possibility over the last 18 months. But it’s gotten easier to buy from the company using a mobile phone.

Dell recently, and quietly, went live with a new version of its Web site that works better with mobile phones. The new site–-easy to reach by typing in Dell’s Web address from the browser on a BlackBerry or similar handset–-says it’s in beta mode. It makes it easy for users to search Dell’s product listings and order PCs and other devices from their handhelds. It also has a link to Dell sale items.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

There has been speculation for months now that Dell (DELL) at some point will make a big acquisition. Most of the thinking has been about diversification moves. But Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi proposes an idea that would boost Dell’s stake in the PC business: consider buying Acer.

In a research note today, Sacconaghi asserts that the PC sector is ripe for consolidation. He notes that the top 5 PC vendors accounted for 56 percent of industry units in 2008, and that the top 10 accounted for nearly 70 percent. Compare that, he suggests, with the x86 server market, where the top 5 players control more than 80 percent of the market, or the Unix server market, where the top 3 have more than 90 percent. It’s even lower than the high-def TV market, where the top 5 have 60 percent share, and the top 10 about 80 percent.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Unable to get the attention of the wireless carriers, Dell (DELL) has decided to enter the mobile phone market by selling its wares direct through retailers, according to Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar. The analyst writes that the carriers have decided to pass on Dell’s handset, “citing a non-compelling product with a roadmap that lags competition.”

Kumar is not optimistic about Dell’s chances for success with that approach, asserting that the company is “facing a stacked deck with little experience on how to play this game.”

Kumar wonders whether consumers will want a phone that the carriers consider to be not good enough to sell directly. “Consumers are used to subsidized handsets and are not used to paying full price,” he notes, and assumes that retailers will provide prime shelf space for Dell’s phones.

Read the rest of this post

Dell (DELL) isn’t dead yet. And in fact, Craig-Hallum analyst Christian Schwab this morning goes so far as to suggest the stock offers investors a potential double. Asserting in a research note this morning that the company can still “get its groove back,” Schwab this morning launched coverage of the stock with a Buy rating and a $19 price target–that’s nearly twice yesterday’s close at $9.83, and higher than the 22 other Dell price targets tracked by Thomson/First Call.

Read the rest of this post

Dell (DELL) CEO Michael Dell has done little to dispel rumors that his company is working on a mobile computing device. In fact, he all but confirmed them while traveling in Japan on March 24 when he said: “It is true that we are exploring smaller-screen devices.” What form those devices will take remains a matter of heated debate. Talk is that Dell plans a smartphone that would compete with Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, and the various devices running software from Microsoft (MSFT), Nokia (NOK), or the Google-backed (GOOG) Open Handset Alliance. Prototypes of a Dell-made smartphone are being circulated in the wild and, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, got a cool reception from mobile-phone carriers including AT&T (T) and Sprint Nextel (S).

Read the rest of this post