Shanghaiist Sunday Show: An Hour with Lee Kuan Yew —The Charlie Rose Show
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Video: The Great Panda Escape
Pencil This In: November 9-13
Michael Dell, CEO and president of computer giant Dell Inc., was in town yesterday to unveil his company's latest strategy to win market share in China: a low cost, fully featured PC with the sexy moniker EC280.
With the company he founded over two decades ago going through a bit of a rough patch lately, having lost its top spot in the PC maker standings to rival Hewlett-Packard, Dell is looking at emerging markets for much needed growth. Here in China, where local favorite Lenovo is still the king (36% share vs. Dell's 9%), there's plenty of room to grow for the U.S company, where it's been doing quite well relative to the rest of its segments. In fiscal 2007, Dell China revenue grew 26% from the year before, compared to around 2% for the corporation as a whole.
The PC, which is available for purchase now online, starts at the bargain basement price of 2,599 RMB ($336 USD), but since Shanghaiist assumes that most users will want to actually see what they're typing, the average price will probably be somewhat closer to the 3,999 RMB ($512 USD) it'll cost to add a 17" LCD monitor. A more detailed product spec can be found here (in Chinese).
According to Businessweek, the EC280 is apparently designed specifically for the Chinese consumer:
Because many urban Chinese live in modest apartments, the EC280 is much smaller than an ordinary desktop. It's actually one-eighth the size of an ordinary desktop and comparable to Apple's Mac Mini. It uses an Intel Celeron processor, commonly found in laptops, rather than a Pentium. And the PC consumes far less power—65 watts compared to an ordinary PC's 250 watts. Because it uses less power, it only needs one fan, which makes it much quieter.
Dell didn't stop with hardware; they also announced that they'd be the first computer maker to publish a corporate blog in Chinese, called Direct2Dell Chinese. Here's a Google Translated version for Dell geeks who want to keep up the China development team's latest hijinks. And to be honest, who wouldn't?
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I'll give you a tip: never, NEVER, NEVER buy a Dell computer in China! I have two Dell laptops: one for personal use, and one from work, and both and terrible pieces of shite. The screen broke on my personal laptop (which was made of cheap, flimsy plastic) and the hard drive is failing in my work laptop. Save yourself the money. Buy elsewhere!!
An opposing viewpoint to Ryan from above:
Our entire office of 21 people has only bought dell for the past two years, and they have been completely reliable. The only problems we've had have been due to software errors. We've not had to call in warranty on any of the screens or computers we've purchased. We've never purchased a laptop, though, and as I understand it, laptops are a completely different business unit. Perhaps that's where the discrepancy lies.