Michael Dell, talking about Apple, in October 1997:
“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
Andy Lark, CIO of Dell, talking about the Apple and specifically the iPad in March 2011:
“Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.”
“[for] an iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying.”
I believe he’s talking Australian dollars, not US dollars but his pricing is still wrong … and who knows why he thinks you need a mouse for an iPad (I’m not convinced you need a keyboard either but I don’t have sales figures for those from Apple). I think I like living on the island I’m apparently on.
Mr Lark goes on:
“…Our strategy is multi-OS,” Lark said. “We will do Windows 7 coupled with Android Honeycomb, and we’re really excited. We think that giving people that choice is very important.”
It will be interesting to watch Dell’s tablet strategy unfold. This is a stock price comparison chart showing Dell versus Apple. Dell is the set of volatile black and red bars, Apple is the brown line along the bottom. Dell have been right before, but not very right, very recently.
