Word: pc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Since founding Dell Computer in his Texas dorm room in 1984, Michael Dell has steadily, inexorably grown his company into the largest PC manufacturer in the world. The firm, based in Austin, Texas, has overtaken the box business's best-known makers-IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard among them-by executing its unorthodox, build-to-order manufacturing formula. Dell Computer isn't known for product innovation. It wins by being efficient, relentlessly so. In the competitive and increasingly commoditized computer industry, Dell's cherub-faced founder and CEO may be the closest thing there is to an irresistible force...
...every irresistible force, there's an immovable object. Dell may be about to bump up against his: Beijing-based Legend Computer. Legend is the runaway PC leader in China, a country that represents one of the planet's last great I.T. sales opportunities. Despite relatively low penetration rates, China's $10 billion computer market is already the third largest in the world; within a few years it is expected to move past Japan and become second only to the U.S. For computer companies, success on the mainland is becoming increasingly crucial as markets in developed countries reach saturation. Last year...
...They're learning now. When the company expanded its sales network in 1998, many observers thought Dell wouldn't make much headway because its business model was wrong for China. Unlike conventional PC companies, Dell makes machines to order and ships them directly to the customer. There are no retailers or middlemen involved; Dell asks its customers to pick and choose the computer configurations they want from a menu and then to complete the sale via the Internet or telephone...
...Witness the carnage after the sharp, unexpected crash on corporate I.T. spending late in 2000: losses convinced IBM to all but abandon in-house PC manufacturing by farming assembly out to subcontractors. Hewlett-Packard and Compaq are trying to merge. Dell was hurt by the downturn, too. The company laid off 1,700 workers last year, its first redundancies ever. But it still managed to increase sales by 18.3% in 2001, showing a profit of $2.1 billion...
TONING UP The Sony Net MD media player ($350) is the first MiniDisc player designed for people who like music with their workouts. It features G-Protection jostle proofing, can record CDs via a PC without copying anything to the hard drive and uses $2 MiniDiscs, which hold up to 110 hours of music. You can't simply drag song files from your computer and drop them onto the player, but you can record at high-capacity 32X, which is pretty buff...