Dell: tablets aren't killing PCs

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 18 Aug 2011 at 14:12

The PC isn't dying - tablets are merely another device in the mix, according to a top Dell executive.

Last week, IBM's chief technology officer Mark Dean predicted the death of the PC, saying tablets and smartphones heralded the demise of the desktop or laptop platform. As PC shipments continue to shrink, and tablets gain momentum, many think his prediction could be right.

However, Dell disagrees. We spoke to Stephen Murdoch, vice president and head of large enterprise at Dell, after the firm posted quarterly revenue growth for a bit of optimism about the industry.

Q. IBM is predicting the death of the PC. Is that view wrong?

A. A lot of technologies are rumoured to die a long time before they have. It’s kind of ironic, IBM commenting on the death of something when people have been commenting on the death of the mainframe for 20 years. IBM still derives a great deal of profit from selling them.

Q. Earlier this week, Michael Dell suggested Windows 8 would help push tablets into businesses - will it take Microsoft's intervention before companies move to tablets?

Today, it’s an extra device, in almost all cases it doesn’t replace a phone or a PC, it’s more of a content consumption device

A. We’ve got a tremendous relationship with Microsoft and Google, and we’ve always been about choice, so Android and Windows are pretty critical to our long-term plans.

We see use cases for tablets growing inside corporations... And you can see some of those in education, and in executive deployments in large corporations, but there’s still some concern around security and how you get a return on investment on a device because it doesn’t replace anything, therefore it needs to come from a productivity improvement.

Today, it’s an extra device, in almost all cases it doesn’t replace a phone or a PC, it’s more of a content consumption device. But we are seeing a lot more interest and demand based on very specific use cases.

Q. What challenges do businesses face when using devices such as tablets?

A. The world’s a different place now - everyone has multiple devices, which blurs home life and work life. That opens up a whole lot of challenges, the boundaries between corporate data and personal data, and what’s acceptable use - such as if you surf particular content that might be a security risk to the corporation.

There's a lot of interest in ways around those challenges, but still enabling the collaboration: how do you let people have access to social media and communications from within the firewall?

And that means you’ve got a blend of answers from traditional PCs to smartphones to tablets to virtual desktops - all of that fuels different demands on the back-end infrastructure.

So we very clearly know one size doesn’t fit all, you need to think about the user – what we call the digital identity. What’s the user trying to accomplish? That’s the whole thrust behind this end-user computing domain that we have.

Q. You mentioned Dell has shifted out of some PC markets, however. What areas aren't working for you anymore?

A. The drag on our revenue growth was us exiting lower value, lower profit pieces of the market place. Some of that was transactional in the PC business - the low price band, highly commoditised piece of the business...

There’s two examples of that: one would be the very low end of consumer, the very low end of the retail space. So whilst we’re expanding our retail presence overall, it’s more of the higher-end product portfolio… Also, the large reverse auction, low spec, highly commoditised business that comes up from time to time, we’re much less interested in that.