Computing and Society - Essay Example

However, there have been some reported setbacks and anomalies recently resulting in the decline of the most admired company in the U.S. To research and analyze the rise and decline of Dell Inc. is the purpose of this report. Michael Saul Dell, the founder of Dell Inc. had his first computer experience at the young age of 15 when he took apart a new Apple II computer and reassemble it again. Born in Houston Texas in 1965, Michael Dell went to college in the University of Texas where he started his computer company PC's Limited selling IBM compatible PC (Kutner, 2001) in his Dobie Centres room.

After two years, Dell was forced to dropped-out to concentrate on his fast growing business and in 1985 design and produce his company's first IBM clone called Turbo PC using an Intel 8088 chip running at 8Mhz. A few years later in 1987 he changed his company name to Dell Computer Corporation (HighTechMag, 2006). Dell became the youngest CEO at Fortune 500 at the age of 27 (Harvard Business Review, 2005) and by late 1989 introduced its first 316LT Laptop Computer (Kutner, 2001). The Dell Computer Corporation endures numerous setbacks including the 1993 burning Laptop issue that cost him market shares to Gateway in the mid 1990's (Kutner, 2001) (HighTechMag, 2006).

The company is once again renamed to Dell Inc. . The company is once again renamed to Dell Inc. in 2003 to reflect their expansion from mainly desktop and notebook manufacturer to a broader product line such as servers, storage, and other technology products (Spooner, 2003). In 2004, another setback came in with Dell's Lattitude, Inspiron, XPS, and Precision Mobile Workstation Notebooks. The official reason given by Dell was short circuit causing the Sony's lithium batteries to overheat and caught fire (Bradley, 2006).

Despite repeated setback, the company continue to survive the competition and by late 2004 became the most successful PC manufacturer in the world with over $49 billion on sales. (HighTechMag, 2006).2.2. Dell's InnovationDell's business strategies are no secret to the business world. (Harvard Business Review, 2005). Dell's direct strategies in selling computers were imitated by other establishments but they could not succeed. Dell is very flexible, when sales in PCs and Servers were slow, Dell shift to market Printers, Handhelds, Projector, Digital Players, and other hi-tech multimedia and entertainment products (Fugate and Mentzer, 2004).

Dell is the first company to really hold on to the Internet and the first one to identify the role of standards in the Server and Storage market (Harvard Business Review, 2005). Dell operates the highest volume Internet commerce site in the world (Orr, 2004). Dell opens its first sales office in Great Britain selling software applications with support centres to handle customer inquiries and in 1991 opened a manufacturing plant in Limerick Ireland. Dell Corporation later then becomes the fist computer manufacturer to offer free installation of software applications for every purchase of computer.

Dell continues to manufacture 3 more lines of computer