Dell posts record profit but consumer sales slide
By Nicole Kobie
Posted on 22 Feb 2012 at 11:06
Dell's revenue for the past year has held steady, propped up by enterprise clients as profits from consumer sales fell.
For the full year, Dell's revenue was $62 billion, up 1% from last year, while profit was up 27% to a record $4bn.
Much of that success was down to its focus on enterprise. Sales jumped 58% for networking and 21% for storage, but consumer profits fell dramatically, especially in the US.
Consumer product sales were down 2% globally, but profit nearly halved to $39m from $69m the year before.
"Revenue weakness was largely concentrated in the United States, while revenue from non-US countries grew 10%," Dell said.
Dell pinned some of its consumer sales woes on the ongoing hard disk shortage.
“We just didn’t get the mix of drives that we wanted, and it really forced us to sell less configured lower-end systems and prevented us from accessing higher-margin, more highly configured systems,” chief financial officer Brian Gladden said, according to a report in the New York Times.
One success in the consumer market was its XPS line; with sales leaping 103%, the XPS now makes up nearly one in five Dell consumer notebooks sold.
Not what the BBC says...
This story is a load of old cobblers. Dell's profits fell in the last quarter, causing share prices to fall, according to the BBC. Given this site's record on journalistic accuracy, I think I'll believe the BBC version:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17122014
By SwissMac on 22 Feb 2012 
Same revenue, 25% profit increase
Businesses clearly don't hunt for bargains like people do.
There's your capitalist "efficiency" debunked right there :P
By dubiou on 22 Feb 2012
Hi @SwissMac,
We took the full year numbers, while the BBC looked at quarterly. Both sets of numbers are released at the same time. Over the past three months, Dell's sales fell; over the year, they were about flat.
Nicole Kobie
News Editor
By Nicole_Kobie on 22 Feb 2012
Not comparing like with like
@SwissMac if you read carefully the two stories are different. The one on this page quotes yearly results, while on the BBC it refers only to the last quarter.
By dwlhot on 22 Feb 2012
News means latest, not most favourable.
You're right the BBC figures are for the last quarter, but that shows the direction the company is going in which is why the share price fell 6% on the news. In comparison, HP lost 1% today, MS -0.1%, Google -0.6%. For comparison, the NASDAQ as a whole went down just -0.2% while Apple are varying between -0.1% and zero loss.
Dell's one of the companies I follow and in the tech sector they are suffering badly. Your story makes it sound like they are thriving! But then, they are a long standing and major advertiser in PCPro...
By SwissMac on 22 Feb 2012
have a day off SwissMac
If all you can do is criticise then dont read the story, simple! Really anoys me that PCPro put a lot of work into the publication but yet you cant resisit being a smart a**e. Go and create your own publication if you think you know it all! You could call it "SwissTroll Knows Best"
By HolisticLA on 23 Feb 2012
advertisement
- Flickr redesign: is it enough to tempt photographers back?
- Hands on with the new Google Maps
- Nokia Lumia 925 review: first look
- Why I won't subscribe to Creative Cloud
- GoPro camera strapped to a remote-control helicopter: the ultimate boy's toy
- Acer Iconia A1 review: first look
- Acer Aspire P3 review: first look
- Acer Aspire R7 review: first look
- How we produce the PC Pro podcast
- Google Now draining iPhone battery
- The ICO's shame-faced u-turn on cookies
- Start8 and ModernMix: making Windows 8 work on a desktop
- How to boost your mobile reception
- How to fix Facebook: Social Fixer
- Taking the stress out of WordPress updates
- Where to download free web fonts
- Turn your tablet into a Sky+ remote control
- How to measure the success of a new IT system
- Three years on: the state of the tablet market
- Windows 8: what works and what doesn't
advertisement
