Michael Dell Back in Charge at Dell
Two and a half years after handing the chief executive title to his hand-picked successor, Kevin Rollins, Michael Dell is again running Dell, the company he founded.
Dell struggled under Rollins's tenure, recently losing its number-one PC vendor ranking to a resurgent Hewlett-Packard and weathering a formal investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into the company's accounting practices.
Rollins has resigned his position as CEO and member of the company's board of directors, Dell said in a statement this afternoon.
The company's board had decided that "there is no better person in the world to run Dell at this time than the man who created the Direct Model and who has built this company over the last 23 years," the statement said. Dell also remains chairman of the board.
Rollins joined Dell in 1996 from management consulting firm Bain & Co. Prior to assuming the role of CEO in July 2004, he had served as Dell's president, chief operations officer, and vice chairman.
Dell also warned today that the company's most recent financial results would fall below analyst expectations. Dell is due to announce its fiscal 2007 fourth-quarter earnings on March 1.
Background
During the third quarter of 2006, HP snatched Dell's ranking as top worldwide PC vendor, a position Dell had held since the end of 2003, according to research company Gartner Inc.
Another low point came in August, when Dell was forced to recall 4.2 million defective laptop batteries because of a fire hazard.
But Dell's real problems centered on two areas: HP's rebound and Dell's inability to gain ground in new markets outside the U.S., said Martin Reynolds, a vice president and research fellow with Gartner.
"They haven't really managed to crack the overseas market," he said. "What's happened is their core market of U.S. enterprise has slowed down--that's become single-digit growth--and HP, which has become a lot smarter, has been taking back some of the share they should have never lost in the first place."
In many countries outside the U.S., customers are reluctant to order a PC over the Internet and wait for it to show up at their door, Reynolds said. "When you get to somewhere like China, direct just doesn't work," he said.
Reynolds believes that Dell's return to the CEO position may be a short-term measure as the company looks for a new leader who can solve the company's international distribution problems.
He said executives with international retail experience, or perhaps someone from United Parcel Service or FedEx, would be possible candidates. "They can go pick from a lot of really strong people.
I place odds on someone coming from outside of the computer industry," Reynolds said. "This is explicitly a problem of distribution channel and paths to market, so there's not really a technology or an operational problem."
Thanks to Robert McMillan amd Robert Mullins of IDG News Service for filling us in.
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I wonder if that will affect our consumer customer service.
Its gotten nothing but worse.
Probably not. Dell doesn't care about customer service. Actually, neither does the other companies. Don't you know, in the corporate world of I-Me-Mine scumbags, customer service is an expense to be cut, not a means to customer retention or loyalty. It's all about the stock holder, NOT the customer
One thing thats for sure is, service can not get worse than it is for me at this point.because no response to fix my 1 1/2 mo. old XPS 410 is the bottom of the line. they wont even send you an email telling you what if any thing they are going to do. maybe Mr. Dell will get in gear and take back control of his company,if not I forsee there profits droping even more.I will never buy another Dell pc.
One thing thats for sure is, service can not get worse than it is for me at this point.because no response to fix my 1 1/2 mo. old XPS 410 is the bottom of the line. they wont even send you an email telling you what if any thing they are going to do. maybe Mr. Dell will get in gear and take back control of his company,if not I forsee there profits droping even more.I will never buy another Dell pc.
One thing thats for sure is, service can not get worse than it is for me at this point.because no response to fix my 1 1/2 mo. old XPS 410 is the bottom of the line. they wont even send you an email telling you what if any thing they are going to do. maybe Mr. Dell will get in gear and take back control of his company,if not I forsee there profits droping even more.I will never buy another Dell pc.