Nearly a year and a half after the return of Michael Dell to the helm of the company he founded, the PC maker finally appears to be on the verge of making a comeback. According to Gartner, Dell’s worldwide PC shipments increasing a robust 21.9 percent in the second quarter, fueled by the company’s ambitious expansion into retail and other indirect channels.
Another recent PC shipment report from IDC also indicates that Dell’s global operations are firing on all cylinders. Dell’s growth outpaced the market in all regions, particularly in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region, noted Loren Loverde, IDC’s PC tracker. The company also continued to see double-digit growth in its core U.S. market, she said.
“Dell’s aggressive channel partner program and retail expansion should help drive volume going forward,” Loverde said. “On the retail front, Dell recently launched a fleet of service centers within Wal-Mart stores to compete with the likes of Best Buy’s Geek Squad.”
Faster Than the Market
Dell’s share of the global market rose to 15.6 percent in the second quarter — up from 14.8 percent one year earlier, noted Mita Kitagawa, a principal analyst at Gartner. The company also achieved more than 40 percent year-over-year growth with respect to its global mobile shipments in the last two quarters, she said.
Although Hewlett Packard continues to hang on to the top PC sales position globally, its latest 18.1 percent market share is little changed from what HP held in the same quarter last year. By contrast, Michael Dell told financial analysts at the end of May that his company has been growing “faster than the industry worldwide in all major product categories and regions, and it has been three years since we have accomplished this.”
Clearly, Dell is once again breathing down HP’s neck…