Dell reportedly in talks to take company private - Page 2

 

To be fair, anyone with eyesight (good or bad) would be convinced this particular model is a copy.  Whether this translates to the rest of their designs is another matter, but this one targeted at consumers is no doubt a MBP copy.

 

That is the problem with companies racing to the bottom in a price-war, you eventually bottom out on price and once people become accustomed to lower prices, they will not willingly pay more unless companies can convince them they are getting more for their money.  As most Windows machines are viewed as commodity appliances, most people will just hold on to their existing computers rather than buy a Dell, or HP that has increased in price with no noticable increase in value.  Apple was smart never to get into the pricing war with these companies.  

Need to ask ¿

Get this guy a glass of ice water!

Good point(s). There's a TED Talk on the subject of why Apple is so successful, an 18 minute watch. A good watch, I think:

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

It looks similar. I noted that. His statement was still idiocy. He suggested that their growth and product strategy was defined by copying a look, defined by a single  jpeg in a Best Buy listing. I pointed him to their site, which obviously provides a lot more information as to how Lenovo markets when viewed in its entirety. Dell has been accused of copying on here too. That alone kills the troll analogy.

 

I haven't paid much attention to his posts. I vaguely remember a couple others that invoked hyperbole. If it was consistently that way, I'd probably remember. I just really hate that level of silliness.

I'd say you're not glad so much that Dell is struggling, but that the result of this perhaps proves to you people have more sense to choose quality over price than you originally had thought.

Glad that makes you happy, WardC. I, on the other hand, have been employed by Dell for 5 years with a family to support. Stay classy. 

Dell - "we are in trouble but are looking for a bailout company to help" = share prices rocket.
Apple - "we have loads of cash, aren't in trouble, break sales records with each new product" = share prices fall.

Why isn't there an investigation going on here?

My how the worm has turned!!! Now WE can use terms like "beleaguered" "struggling" to describe Dell! Maybe next time, if there is one, he'll keep his fat mouth shut!

It should only be illegal beyond an unreasonable markup. If a group cornered a market, then colluding to keep markets at a high price should be illegal but I don't see why agreeing with competitors to keep prices at a reasonable level is bad. HP, Lenovo and Dell are all sitting at around 5% or less net margins. The law should work to keep businesses viable. By making it illegal to use measures to maintain a profitable business, that's contrary to that.

It also makes it better for smaller companies because they can actually be competitive with bigger retailers. It helps the whole economy because it means that giant companies aren't dying out leaving thousands of people out of jobs. In the ebook industry, maintaining a reasonable margin helps publishers and authors survive. It doesn't really harm anyone as long as there is a limit to how much companies can collude to markup products. I'd say it could even be as much as 50%. If you are willing to pay $500 for a TV then allowing companies to agree to a $750 retail price should be fine.

It's not mandating a minimum markup, other companies can go below it if they choose but if a group feels it's in the best interests of the market, they should be allowed to agree with competitors to fix prices up to a certain level. If they go too high, that's their problem because smaller businesses will be able to grow.

I don't see it that way. By pushing Ultrabooks, it means that Apple looks better by comparison. PC manufacturers were struggling to match Apple's quality and spec and still have a much better price. HP Ultrabook is $850 without SSD:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-5228908-5228906-5271152.html?dnr=1

Possibly but I reckon $100 or so wouldn't make a huge difference. Even if they sell fewer units, they could be doubling their profit. The prices we generally assign to products aren't based all that much on the products themselves. It would be very hard to assess how much it costs to build a car and yet we all accept the prices because all the products in that class are around the same price.

As you said, they have defined their own price range over the past few years and it may take too much to change the expected price of a Windows computer. They need to try something though or they will end up out of business. Of course it helps Apple if they go under as those 13m or so buyers per quarter will migrate somewhere and a small portion will switch to the Mac.

I'm not happy about it either.  

 

I have no love for Dell (I do have a flatscreen monitor that's given me years of excellent service) but I'm under no illusion that Apple will take over markets dominated by Dell.  Commodity computing keeps the industry afloat, keeps component prices reasonable and helps drive processor development.  

Good. Public ownership is BS. It's not public. It's just wider distributed private wealthy ownership. Public ownership leaves companies at the mercy of people who know and care nothing about product and customers. It's one of the major failures of capitalism.

I agree, I think there should be a link between the investor and the company directly because otherwise it just gets used as a means for wealthy people to hoard more wealth. There was an example of Palm when it launched the Pre and a venture capitalist invested $325m:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10192709-94.html

Then went around making ridiculous assertions like:

"You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later."

The motivation had nothing to do with the Pre itself, it was just to raise the value of the investment. As they say "the first rule of business: protect your investment". You see that on this forum sometimes where people defend or criticize Apple contrary to facts and then complain about the stock price in other threads and you can see there's an ulterior motive. It's not about finding out facts but protecting the investment.

investor looking to buy cheap: "Tim Cook shoots puppies"
investor looking to profit: "It's widely known that puppies have suicidal tendencies and probably jumped into the line of fire"

The motive creates a lot of false information. The company itself does business regardless and the outcome is that the bank balance of the wealthy fluctuates one way or another:

http://www.webosnation.com/elevation-partners-eke-out-25-million-profit-after-sale-palm

If they'd sold the previous year, they'd have made $1.5b in the space of probably just over 2 years and you can bet Bono wouldn't be sending it to the starving children.

It doesn't always work out of course - the guy behind Mcafee antivirus apparently lost most of his $100m fortune:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149904/John-McAfee-arrested-Belize-police-claim-running-meth-lab.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/business/economy/21inequality.html?ref=business&_r=0

but it still highlights the decoupling of wealth and value. Money and digital wealth are by their own merit worthless. They are just assigned value and attached to entities that have value like companies which produce products and innovation. By allowing these inherently worthless assets to be exchanged for assets that have tangible value, it creates a very uncertain situation because we end up with a fictional monetary system that has no real meaning in the face of our resources. What exactly does a trillion dollars look like? It doesn't mean anything.

The worst thing I think is that it separates personal wealth from any personal responsibility to create value. Someone can work at a minimum wage job actually providing a service and never make enough to have a comfortable lifestyle but if they put aside some money and invest it the right way, they can become rich quite quickly from the work of other people e.g turning $20k into $20m in 3 years:

http://www.businessinsider.com/one-investor-spots-stocks-before-wall-st-2012-12

The wealth isn't tied to the value contribution. The value is created by the workers. Although the investment can obviously pay the workers, there's a very distinct separation in the ratios of work to reward between different wealth classes, most likely due to the scale of the global economy now where you can film your kid biting another kid's finger, get hundreds of millions of clicks and make over $150k:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2068938/Charlie-bit-finger-The-boys-100k-57-second-YouTube-video.html

These reward ratios give investors a sense of entitlement that they start demanding how the company should be run and start spreading lies to adjust the stock.

But all that is just describing the problem. There's no real fix because companies will always need investment of some kind so they'd just have to regulate the investments and returns but then they'd still end up favouring one party over another. I think given that the success of a company depends on the workers, the customers and the investors that the reward from the created value shouldn't go to just one of those parties but for the most part where investment is not needed, companies should stay private. I think Apple would be better off private at this point too. Investors are just trying to cash in and are being destructive to the company by spreading lies about the company and the market in order to make the fluctuations give them the best return.

This behaviour isn't exclusive to investors, it's just the way people are. In any walk of life people try to maximize the return on investment. If you exercise, your return is a healthy body; if you study, your return is understanding; if you work, your return is a salary (hopefully increasing). The difference seems to be that in most walks of life there are inherent constraints on your personal investment. You only have so much time to study and work, so much energy to exercise etc. Once you go digital, the equivalent contraints are much less and I think that's how our financial systems have managed to get so out of control. There's not enough practical regulation that constrains investment to resources.

Perhaps it should be mandatory that a company goes private once they reach a certain financial status. After all, why would a company that makes many billions of dollars in profits need investment? If they start to fail, the company can choose to get investment again. This forces investments in smaller businesses and limits the return to more closely match the contribution of the investor. If the customers and workers could be rewarded more too, even better.

 

Because you don't understand how markets work?

 

Dell is saying that they are going to buy investors' shares from them, likely at a premium.  Hence the price increase.  Apple can't afford to buy back all their outstanding shares because the company is worth so much more.