Dell Inc. doesn’t have to start over in its quest to become a significant purveyor of technology for businesses after losing a multibillion dollar bidding contest for an obscure data-storage maker.
But it won’t be easy, either, for Dell to shake its “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” image and move into the more profitable business of selling powerful behind-the-scenes technology to other companies.
Dell, which launched the bidding contest for 3Par Inc. on Aug. 16, conceded defeat Thursday and said it won’t match the latest offer from its archrival, Hewlett-Packard Co.
HP raised the stakes to $33 per share, or about $2.07 billion — 83 percent above Dell’s first offer and more than three times what 3Par stock was trading at then. Dell’s latest offer had been a dollar per share less, or about $2 billion.
Dell was hoping to buy 3Par so it could diversify its business more quickly.
Dell’s made-to-order computer business helped make PCs inexpensive and ubiquitous, but other companies including HP found ways to build even cheaper machines using contract manufacturers.
Although HP was able to expand beyond the business of selling computers, Dell has remained very much a computer company, with more than half its revenue coming from PCs last fiscal year. Rising component costs and the PC industry’s race to rock-bottom prices, accelerated by the rise of cheap netbooks from competitors such as Acer Inc., combined to sap much of the profit out of Dell’s core business.
Through a string of acquisitions, Dell has raced to follow IBM Corp., HP and other high-tech companies into the more lucrative business of selling data-center hardware and consulting services.
And while its servers do not generate as much revenue as its PC business, Dell is a leading maker of x86 servers, a low-end product for companies and data centers. Those servers are seeing a surge…