Dell are serious, they have to make this work or find another way to stay in business [LWN.net]

Dell are serious, they have to make this work or find another way to stay in business

Posted May 2, 2007 0:48 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
In reply to: Dell, you can go to by grouch
Parent article: Dude, you're getting Ubuntu (Linux.com)

All of the major vendors offering Linux on desktops and laptops is inevitable. Margins are so narrow that once desktop Linux is 10% of sales, no company will want to forgo that 10%. This is what we saw with servers.

So if you are a major vendor the question is when to jump. Do you go first and risk retaliation from that Major Software Vendor, or do you go last and risk having no brand recognition with desktop Linux purchasers?

Dell are in strife. They want to get back to the basic idea that made their company great -- sell the customer exactly what they want, with huge amounts of customisation, but we do this in such a way that makes their assembly line efficient. If they can't do that then Dell will be competing against the whitebox manufacturers and, as we've seen, Dell loses that competition.

So here is a group of customers wanting a customisation -- desktop Linux. So if Dell's sale model is going to succeed, it has to take on and serve that demand in an efficient way. We're seeing that with other customer-driven customisation demands as well, such as Dell continuing to offer Windows Xp.

All of this leads to Dell being the first major manufacturer to make the jump. I wish them the best.

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Dell are serious, they have to make this work or find another way to stay in business

Posted May 2, 2007 5:48 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Very good points. There's also an interesting transition from desktops to notebooks going on for the PC industry and Dell:

* The share of notebooks sold increases every year

* Notebooks are less suitable for Dell's build-to-order model in which the customer selects exactly which components should be included

* Build-to-order is essential to the way Dell has always sold direct - without that, you need to build based on market predictions and ship these to the channel (retail shops)

* Having more software-based options for notebook customisation helps Dell provide "software build-to-order" for and still sell direct, as you mentioned

* Pre-installed Linux, if it's done right and it sells reasonably well, gives Dell a differentiator, at least until others start selling this - and it might reduce its overall support costs due to the lower prevalence of malware on Linux.