It’s weird to think of now, but Dell Computer was crazy geeky once upon a time. Starting out in Michael Dell’s dorm room, his fledgling enterprise made him enough scratch that he could quit college and focus on computers full time. At one time seeing itself as the average consumer’s company of choice, Dell the company has had some ups and some serious downs in the last few years. In the interests of full disclosure, I have been paid to write articles by Dell products in the past (not here). Despite that, I rarely use kid gloves when I discuss the fact that Dell is a company that has seen better days. One of the biggest hurdles, or so we are led to believe, has apparently been answering to shareholders. Well, that excuse is gone.
Despite some of the company’s shareholders not being fans (if you’re reading this, hi, Mr. Icahn!), the founder’s bid to take the company private again has succeeded at a price of$25 billion. Don’t expect this to result in new, hipper desktops. According to Forbes, Dell is likely to be focusing more on the enterprise. Allegedly, the company is interested in mobile computing, an area that Dell has historically been unable to crack.
It sounds a lot like Dell is headed in the direction of IBM and the direction HP considered a few years ago. However, it remains to be seen if removing shareholders from the equation actually helps or if Dell is rearranging deck chairs.
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